The Blue Rose: The Other Side of Me
by SPDudley
Summary: Erin Forrestal has kept a dark secret most of her childhood: she is the pilot of Evangelion Unit 04. After years of training in isolation she is finally fulfilling the role she's been prepared for yet she's haunted by strange dreams of a mysterious boy. This is the Blue Rose saga, from the other side of the mirror.
1. Activation

I sit here in the entry plug and try to be patient but I have such hard trouble with it. It's not my first time in here as I've been inside this and the simulated plugs for months now, but today's the latest try to get this thing activated. By now I've gotten a little used to it, the LCL that I used to practically choke on now feels natural in my lungs and I can feel it slightly bubbling against my face. My hands are on the actuators and I'm leaning back on the chair, or the Throne as they call it. The wraparound video display that's all around me shows various diagrams as the crew outside prepares for what they hope will be a successful activation this time, something we've been trying to accomplish for over two months.

The countdown continues and so here I wait. We're about five hundred feet underground, well outside the view of the surface, in a secret place that looks like an indoor sports area without the stadium seats but built just for what we're doing now. Except for my father and a few of his most trusted people no one in the world knows we're here.

I can feel my stomach growl a bit and I instantly regret not eating before I got suited up today. But then they were afraid I might lose my lunch (actually dinner, as it's about 10pm right now here in Nevada) if something went wrong or if the testing was too violent. So I just bear with it the best I can. For the test and for all of the experiments with the Evangelion we've done so far I'm wearing a plug suit, a full-size bodysuit that's an interesting cross between a wetsuit, dancewear and something you'd float in outer space with. But it fits me snugly like a second skin and actually I like that feeling. My suit is bright orange, with black stripes and piping, the number "04" is printed right below my neckline indicating the name of the Evangelion Unit that I'm supposed to be piloting.

I remember that day well. It was the last day of my innocence, and the first day when everything in my life changed.

By now nearly everyone who is reading this knows about Evangelion. They've read about the Angels, about the war for the future of Earth between monsters and men, and men who became monsters. Second Impact, Third Impact, NERV, SEELE, The Children, Tokyo-3, all of those things have now become part of our common history and how Earth was nearly destroyed, once by creatures beyond our understanding and once by people we knew all too well. But the story of the Evangelions and the three children who piloted them is only part of the adventure, the tip of the iceberg. The War wasn't just in Tokyo-3, it was all over the world in so many places and it didn't just end with the Angels being defeated. There was so much more going on that people don't know, at least not until now.

I don't ever want to take away from the courage and the bravery of those children from Tokyo-3 who piloted EVA in those dark times. Over the years I've gotten to know them better and I'm still amazed at how they made it through all of that hell and somehow still remained pretty decent people in the end. They still have their nightmares about it though, and so do I. Because Shinji, Asuka and Rei weren't the only pilots, there were others too.

My name is Erin Forrestal, and this is my story.

* * *

The speakers in my entry plug sound out with the voices of technicians sitting inside the control room across from me. "First contact complete, Second contact initiated." The entry plug screen flashes another set of diagrams as the entry plug is calibrated to the Evangelion's operation. Then another voice comes on, that of my father. "Erin, dear, how are you?"

My eyes and ears perk up at the sound of his voice. "Just fine. Are we going to do it this time?"

"Well, I sure hope so. Just concentrate on the EVA like I told you and keep yourself focused."

"Okay!" I cheerfully reply and then grab onto the actuators just a little tighter.

This is the twelfth attempt in the last month to activate Unit 04. Each time we got far into the activation sequence but never to the final point, where pilot and EVA are finally connected to each other. I was anxious with what would happen when EVA and I would cross together: it wasn't something that you could train or prepare for, no simulator could give you the feeling of what it would be like. All we knew was that it had been done before by other pilots elsewhere in the world, and if they could do it we could too.

"Connect to A10 Nerve. All Circuits are operational…checking nerve links." I foolishly hold my breath, hoping for a good result this time. A voice calls out "Second Contact completed, moving to Final Contact." That meant the basics of the link are done and now we go to the final step, the line we've yet to cross over.

My heart races and I can feel myself sweat inside the plug suit. I'm excited but nervous and just try to picture myself as part of the giant that I'm inside of, and how my head is its head and my hands are its hands. Over the speaker comes the next part. "Passing Absolute Critical Line…"

Everyone is silent as they watch and wait. The display on my screen shows a set of arrows progressing upward, just barely within reach of my target. I close my eyes and think of the most positive thing I can. I think of being little and being in between my mom and dad and how wonderful that felt, but then I shake my head. No, don't make me think about it, I don't want to remember what came after that. Something better, like butter cookies or making a perfect landing off of the balance beam or something like that…I let myself get all quiet and then I just have this weird vision, like I can see the last piece fitting inside of a puzzle. _That's it!_

"Borderline Clear!" an excited voice shouts out. On the screen there's a flash as the progression arrow reaches upwards, and in big bold letters it says ACTIVATION ACHIEVED.

"We did it!" another voice shouts, then my father's voice comes on again. "Stay focused, everyone. It's just the first step here." I'm excited, although truthfully I don't particularly any different than a minute ago.

"Checking Harmonics….All green!"

My father's voice comes in again. "What's the sync rate?"  
"29.54%"

"Excellent!"

My impatience finally gets the better of me. "Did we do it?" I ask, nearly shouting. "Yes, dear, we've finally got a link. Now do you think you can show us some movement on your end."

I look at my video display which now shows the view from the EVA unit's head, and I can see the giant room around me. EVA-04 is standing on a platform forty meters below, and across from us at the other end is a control room set inside of the opposite wall. Without really thinking I go to move my right hand and then I notice something on the display. The EVA is moving its hand right along with me. I gasp in excitement and do things with my hands and fingers for the next thirty seconds, first right then left. The EVA matches my movement perfectly.

"I got it to move!" I call out. "Good! Good!" my father replies. "Now do you think you can move off the platform?"

"I'll try." To be completely fair this is nothing like the simulator, there's practically no effort to me to move this thing. I just think and there we go. We start to take steps and then turn around to face another direction, and the EVA moves right along. "I got it to walk."

"Okay," my dad said with a steady voice. "Can you walk to the other side?"

"I got this!" I start thinking about walking and it takes one step, and then another…and then suddenly everything starts falling. "Oh, shit!" I cry out. A second later there's a thud and I feel myself buffet around the entry plug. "What happened?"

"You just stumbled a bit, tried to go too fast." My father addresses the others in the control booth. "Any damage? No?" Then he speaks to me again "Can you pick yourself up?" I think to get up and she does it. It's a _she_ , I think to myself, not an _it_. Why is that? "I got up!"

"Okay, just try it again but baby steps, Erin. Just take little steps." I do what my father asks and then slowly move around the interior of the chamber until I get my confidence. Pretty soon I'm walking all around, and things got better from there.

For the next hour I put the EVA through its paces. Walk, run, even jump a bit. I didn't feel confident enough to do anything like a cartwheel or a flip, but I felt like I maybe the next time could do it without really even trying. I was totally in control of this thing and it felt wonderful, like nothing else in the world.

* * *

After over sixty minutes of piloting the Evangelion I was exhausted from all of the excitement and effort, and everyone else didn't want to push our luck as EVA was "our little secret" and nearly everyone wanted to keep it that way for now. I walked the unit back to the cage and then the ground crew let me out. I spend a couple of minutes cleaning myself off of excess LCL and getting back to breathing real air, and then still wearing my plug suit I go happily bouncing to the end of the steel platform like a little girl. At the other end were a group of people wearing NERV Khaki uniforms, some with white lab coats and with my father at the head of the pack.

"Daddy! Daddy!" I called to him as I ran. "I did it!"

My father just smiled at me as I approached. Given as I was still too wet with LCL on me and my plugsuit I couldn't quite hug him like I wanted to, but he took my hands and shared my smile. "And indeed you did! Excellent job!" He then turned to the men behind him and addressed them. "As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, our efforts have borne fruit!"

One of the others, an overweight white guy who wore a darker grey NERV uniform, stepped up to my father. "Well, all thanks to you, Harrison. We could never have done this without your amazing contribution."

"Thank you, Commander Stennis."

"Now with this unit and the incoming Unit 03, we'll soon be able to achieve our goal of becoming the prime operational force of NERV and not just an offshore factory. When do you think we can start combat-testing the EVAs?"

My father shrugged. "Soon, I would think. Given that the Japanese are presently distracted with fighting Angels we should be able to spin up our little operation in no time."

"Good. I'll be sure to report to our friends in Congress about this, they'll be glad to hear it as well."

"As long as it's still kept under wraps," my Father chided the commander. "We wouldn't want the folks at Tokyo-3 to get any idea of what we're up to. We'll maintain total secrecy up until the right time."

I interrupted my dad as he turned to someone else, excited as I was then. "Dad! Dad, can we go to…" He cut me off.

"Now, Erin, I'd like to introduce you to someone else you'll be working closely with for the next stage of the operation." He motioned to two other people in the room I didn't recognize: one was a large, bulking man with graying hair and steel blue eyes who I figured was probably in his fifties, the other was a muscular teenaged boy nearly as tall as he was, with black, short-cropped hair and dark brown eyes, and a facial expression that I could only describe as smug. The older man wore a NERV uniform like the others adults in the group but the boy wore a more casual outfit like any teenager, with blue jeans and a grey sweatshirt. I still remember the words on the sweatshirt: "I EAT WHAT I KILL."

"Now Erin, this is Admiral Vinson," my father said as he stood next to the larger man. "He's the new head of security here at Second Branch." The giant was intimidating but had a good smile too and his expression softened when he bent over to speak to me. Politely offering his hand to me, he introduced himself.

"It's very good to finally meet you, Miss Forrestal." I offered my own hand although I was a bit cautious: I felt like it might get crushed in those giant hands of his.

"It's my pleasure," I said cheerfully.

"And," my father had now moved onto the boy. "This is Admiral Vinson's son Vance."

The tall boy looked at me with a smirk and scratched his head just slightly, not offering his hand. "Hi."

"Uh, hi," I replied, just giving him a polite wave.

His smirk went a little bit wider. "Well, little girl, you're pretty cute, you know."

Oh, great. I thought. This jerk is actually trying to hit on me. Really? I just batted my eyeslashes and smiled politely, not even taking this seriously.

"Vance here," my father continued, "is also an EVA pilot like yourself, being the designated pilot of Unit 03. He and his father have now transferred from Massachusetts to here at NERV-2, and will be living on base." My father then turned to me and smiled just a bit. "Starting tomorrow, you'll be training in your unit together with him."

"Wait, _what?"_

Vance then steps up to me and with a big grin on his face says "That's right, babe, we're going to be working together so I hope you got your best game for me."

What a complete asshole, I thought. "Uh, yeah. Right." I would have said a lot more but I really didn't want to embarrass myself or Dad at the moment. Trying to change the subject, I turned back to my dad. "Um, Dad? Now that we're done can we go out and celebrate?"

His facial expression became suddenly strained. "Um, I'm afraid not dear. I really need to see to our guests for tonight."

"But Dad! We've been at this for weeks! You promised if we succeeded you would…"

Before I could finish he put his hands on my shoulders and said "I know what I said but unfortunately duty calls and we need to honor those who pay the bills. I promise I'll take you out again soon." I didn't say anything in return but just pouted. He then gently took his hand to caress my wet hair and said "Now, dear be a good girl and go back to our place. I'll be back late tonight so don't wait for me. Okay?"

Sighing, I give in. "Okay."

"That's a good girl. I'll see you in the morning." And with that my dad left to find Commander Stennis and the others and then led them out the doorway by the end of the EVA cage, talking along the way. I stood by as the procession left and watched them go, noticing not much other than a group of talkative older guys in suits and uniforms, although at the end of the procession was one other man. This guy was older, nearly just as big as Admiral Vinson and with gray hair, but he wore a green uniform tunic and had on one of those vision enhancers, the ones with a big red slot across the front. He didn't say anything but just looked at me and then turned to go with the others. He gave me a sort of chill at the time, that I do remember, only it wasn't until much later on that I found out why.

As the group of them left the cage, Vance was the last to go. Winking at me from behind, he said "See you tomorrow, babe," and then just smiled and went along with the others. There I was just standing by myself. I closed my eyes and sighed deeply as this was not how I wanted to end my night.

* * *

After the test I shuffle back to my changing room. This is a secret operation and the whole testing range is built five hundred feet underground in a remote area of the base so besides the unit cages, some rooms for training and operations and the indoor arena where I did the test today there's not too much space. The people who built this place put in a small locker room for me that's about the size of a restaurant bathroom, and it's got a shower, one large locker and a bench I can sit on, and a sink and toilet and so forth. Anyway, I peel off the plug suit and then go shower off, silently letting the warm water run all over me for the next twenty minutes. All of the tiredness hits me now that the excitement of the activation wears off, and I feel like gravity went up a few notches.

After drying myself off I go to the locker and get back into the clothes I wore when I came in here. I pull on a black cotton short-sleeved leotard, which is about the most comfortable thing I own, and then a flower-pattered pair of skorts and then a black wrap-sweater. I slip back into strap sandals and then hurry out, slamming the door behind me.

The testing center is at the end of a long passageway that's about three hundred feet long, and there's guards at either end that just wave me by. They know me by now. Everyone at NERV-2 knows me by now. Once at the other end I go alone into an elevator and then a long ride to the surface. At the top is what looks like some sort of dumpy little supply building, it's there where I find a car waiting outside and I get in it. Outside it's pitch black and there's barely a moon visible. It's about midnight at that moment.

The car takes me to my apartment building, the second tallest building in Second Branch apart from the observation tower at the middle of this place. Once getting outside I go into the lobby and straight to the elevators without even saying high to the doorman/security guard. Our place is at the 33rd floor, and the elevator takes me straight to the top in about two minutes. I'm getting sleepy and lean on the walls for the short ride.

Once there I go straight for the apartment. There's only two suites on this floor, ours and the base commander's on the other side. I don't even need a key card as the door lock is matched to my voice, so I just say "Hello, Open!" and it does.

Once inside our place I breathe another sigh of relief and then go for the fridge. The whole place is mostly dark, just a few lights turn on by themselves when I get in. In the fridge I just grab a bottle of water and gulp it all down. I'm not even hungry anymore, instead I feel really tired.

My dad and I have this whole place to ourselves, although he's got the living room converted into this massive computer station while I've got a bedroom plus another room for play and schooling and stuff. I just go for the bedroom and get out of most of my clothes, but I don't even bother changing into a nightgown. I then plop right on the top of the bed in just my leotard and lay there and do nothing.

For a few minutes I go through in my brain what happened today, all of the excitement of being finally able to beat that unit, to get synced up and actually get the Evangelion to move and everything, only to have it all go downhill when I get out. Maybe I should have just stayed inside the entry plug tonight at least the EVA could keep me company.

Also that boy was really irritating. I actually don't mind if a boy's interested in me, I mean it's not like boys are crawling all over this place. I barely ever see other kids my age at all here. But does he have to be such a jerk-ass? First time I actually get hit on and it goes like that. I guess romance novels are just stories after all.

After a few more minutes of just lying there and listening to the soft tick-tock of the hallway clock I finally get to sleep. There's a cool breeze out the window crack and I can just barely feel it.

The first of the dreams came that night. It felt like I was wondering around some sort of little house. I couldn't see much, it seemed like everything was foggy or blurry, and sounds came back muffled, but there I was and there was someone else there too, someone older sitting on a chair by a fireplace. I wondered around this little place and then felt some sort of strange urge to pee, which I thought was weird: do you pee in dreams? But anyway I go inside a little room and that's when I saw something else. Was it a reflection or was I looking at someone else I couldn't tell but I saw the face. It was still blurry but even so I could still see the eyes: green, bright green. A soft face with features and light hair bushed up like a birds' nest. Then all of a sudden those eyes looked straight at me and it scared me awake.

I nearly jumped out of bed, so frightened that I rushed into my bathroom and immediately splashed water on my own face. I shook my head and took a few deep breaths and then looked at the mirror. As always it was just me: my blonde hair done in sort of a bob cut and then a cute little nose and mouth on a cute face, at least I think so. My own green eyes look back at me and that's when I notice that it's the same shade of green as that person's eyes in the dream. Was that me? Or someone else? All I know is that it was the strangest feeling I had ever felt, even weirder than syncing up with the Evangelion, and I just spent the next half an hour looking at the mirror and wondering what was really going on in my life.

* * *

 _Hello to the latest installment in the Blue Rose series of Evangelion Fanfiction stories. If you're new to the Blue Rose saga, welcome! The Blue Rose is an alternative universe for Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of the key differences being that in Blue Rose the American side of the EVA program was much more ambitious (and problematic). Compared to many EVA fanfics Blue Rose has more focus on original characters, although all of the familiar cast are certainly major players in the saga. If you haven't yet read any of the other Blue Rose stories you might want to read this one (The Other Side of Me) before going to the others, as I've written this to tell that same story but from a different point of view._

 _If you've already read the Blue Rose series of course you know who Erin Forrestal is, and without giving anything away to other readers you know that the path in front of her is not at all easy. When I had completed the earlier Blue Rose stories I had only one real regret and that was not providing nearly enough page time for Erin, who I thought had a very compelling storyline of which we only see in various snapshots and flashbacks until she appears in the second half of The Awakening. This new story is an attempt to give her character full development. In doing so I am taking a different approach than my earlier stories in that this is going to be a very limited first-person perspective, so hopefully this will be something that feels very fresh to the reader despite that we are "mirroring" the other Blue Rose stories in the process. There's lots of new ground here to cover so I hope that this will prove very entertaining as we go on._

 _I expect to try and post every two weeks with a new installment, with a goal to be completely done within a few months. Feedback is as always very welcome. Thanks! -spd_


	2. Beginnings

Before I go any further I should back up and tell the readers how I got involved in all of this. Let me just say at first that except for some very short nearby trips Second Branch was my one and only home for the first thirteen years of my life.

Second Branch goes by several names. To the old timers this place is called Groom Lake, that's what used to be here a long time ago and by "lake" what they really meant was this big patch of salt a mile wide that's smack in the middle of the desert that used to be a lake about a hundred thousand years ago. Others called this place Tonopah, which was an old native name for this part of southern Nevada. Most of the world once knew this part of Nevada as Area 51, which was a secret Air Force test airfield. Some said that the US government once kept captured alien UFOs here and would fly them in experiments to try and figure out how they worked.

To NERV, the global agency that was created to fight the Angels and build and operate the Evangelion, this place is known as NERV-2 or sometimes NERV-02. There's a sister base, NERV-01 , located in Massachusetts, while NERV itself is headquartered in Japan. There are other NERV bases but apart from two others in Germany we're the largest one outside of Tokyo-3.

To me this place is Second Branch and it's basically desert as far as you can see in all directions. We're miles away from any civilized place, and there's only one road that goes north or south from here. The biggest place anywhere nearby is the old, abandoned city of Las Vegas. I went there once with my dad when I was little, and it's really surreal to go and see it as there's all of these giant hotels that were built in fancy shapes like castles and Egyptian pyramids. It used to have millions of people come and visit but now only lizards and snakes live there. The next largest city is hundreds of miles away.

In any case Second Branch is a part of NERV, the international agency created to fight the Angels. The Angels were these ginormous, practically invulnerable monsters who were predicted to attack the Earth in order to destroy all life on the planet. But back then the general public didn't know that as the "cover story" for NERV was about having a super-expensive, super-science program to protect Earth from killer asteroids like the one that everyone was told destroyed Antarctica in 2000. Only as we all know by now that didn't actually happen either. Second Branch was supposed to be where some of the Evangelion units, the giants NERV was constructing to combat and defeat the Angels, were being constructed through a very long and expensive process. Second Branch was never intended to actually operate the Evangelions on their own though and that's where my family enters the picture.

* * *

My first memories are of the three of us: me, my mom, and my dad. When I was very young I remember my dad being tall and strong, and seeming like a lot of fun. My mom was gentle and kind, and was nearly always around wherever I was. We lived on the base, not in the tower but in a house. I remember that it was hot, and seemed hot nearly all of the time.

Most of the time I was with my mother, and I guess she worked while watching over me but I don't remember being left with anyone else but either her or my dad. While it's been so long that I can't remember entirely what she looked like, she had my hair color and my eyes and wore glasses. Dad always dressed smartly and had neatly combed hair with a little trimmed beard that I thought looked like the guy on the fried chicken packages.

I don't have much memories of those earlier days but some things stick out. One was that my mother loved to work in a garden outdoors. She would take me and we would go outside our old house and she would get down on her hands and knees and plant things and then water and tend to them. I would always go with her, and sometimes get involved in watering or digging if I wasn't playing around.

There was one day we were doing this when I noticed that mom always looked out into the distance when she was gardening. Sometimes she's stop what she was doing and she'd just look towards the mountains that were southwest of us, far in the distance. I noticed that she was looking out there and she seemed very sad.

"Mommy," I asked her. "What's wrong?"

"Oh," she said in her soft voice, "I'm just thinking about something I left outside." I looked at her face and noticed that she had tears in her eyes.

"Mommy," I asked again. "If you forgot something we could go get it!"

"It's alright," she told me. "Mommy will take care of it." Then she went back to her garden, planting yellow wildflowers as I watched and thought little of it.

My dad often took trips outside the base and I'd stay with mom while he was gone. There were other times when mom took her own trips, and usually not with dad. In those times she's leave me with dad and I'd anxiously wait until she returned, usually in a day or two. Dad would usually play with me a little, then leave me in front of the computer all day to play games while he'd work.

But one day when I was four years old, Mom left on a trip and didn't come back.

I remember that day. I remember that it never really rained in the desert but that day it rained hard, and a torrential desert storm came and washed away her little garden.

For the next few days I'd spent my time waiting in the living room for mom to show up. I just didn't understand and kept asking my dad what happened to mom. Dad was reluctant to tell me, and that was often how he was: unable to tell the truth, he'd talk around it. Finally after a few days Dad, who was acting in a slow and gloomy way, sat me down on my bed in the bedroom. It was then he finally explained what had happened.

"Erin, dear," he told me in a sad, gravelly voice, "your mother won't be coming back for a while."

I was shocked. "Why not?" I asked.

"She has…she has become like one of the Angels," he said. "We will not see her for a long while."

I didn't quite know what to say, the concept of life and death still not quite understandable for the four year old me. "So is she in heaven?"

"Yes, dear."

"So, can we at least talk to her?"

"Yes, dear. We can talk, and she can listen to us, but she cannot talk back to us."

"But why did she go?" I asked, still trying to wrap my little brain around this. "She went because she needed to," my father struggled to say. "And only when we really need her she will return."

"But I need her now!" I cried out. "I need my mommy!" My father could not console me, instead saying only "I am sorry, dear," and then walking out of my bedroom. He just left me there while I cried.

I don't remember much else about my early life. I don't even quite remember when the word "dead" got into it but somehow after a few months I knew it. She wasn't coming back no matter how hard I prayed at night, and I think around age five or six I just gave up on hoping she would.

* * *

When I was six years old my dad took me for a walk where he worked. By now they had built the tall tower that we lived in, and I had a new larger bedroom and a new computer with new games, and the balcony on our apartment overlooked all of the sprawling complex that was being constructed. We walked from our apartment to dad's car, and then he drove me through the new, shining city that was being built in the middle of the desert. Back then I didn't know exactly what Dad did, except that dad wore both a uniform and a white lab coat to work, and that dad's hair had changed from brown to silver. He smiled a little more however and at times was still very warm with me. On this day, with my hand in his, he led me through hallways filled with other scientists and machines and equipment and all sort of "science stuff" and then took me to an elevator.

"Where are we going?" I asked him.  
"I want to show you something," he replied.

The elevator ride seemed long and boring but I remember my ears popping during the ride. The doors sild open and then it opened up into what seemed like a cave. I was scared but Dad took my hand and assured me that it was safe here.

After walking for a while down a narrow and dimly lit passageway we entered another giant cavern and then dad used some sort of device to turn on the lights. A set of floodlights shined in front of us and then I saw it for the first time. At that time it was a skeleton and little else, but it was giant and terrifying. I screamed and hid behind dad.

Sensing my fear, he coaxed me out and then held onto me as he explained what this way. "Erin, dear, do you know what your dad does for work?" I honestly didn't and shook my head.

"I build this," he said. "A giant skeleton?" I asked in a perplexed voice.

"It's only this right now, but one day this will become the most powerful thing in the world," he told me. "And…" he then kneeled down and pointed right at my chest. "When I'm done this will belong to you."

"To _me_?"

"Yes. You will pilot it. It will be your purpose in life to do so."

I shrugged, now very confused as to what was going on. "What will I do with it?"

"Save the world," he said.

* * *

By the time I was six I was already very used to getting educated by the computer, as dad had pretty much had me learning on it since I could barely walk and talk. All of my lessons, my vocabulary, counting, the basics of things like science and history and all about the world outside, all came from the computer screen that I was plopped in front of for hours each day.

Of course not everything can be schooled that way so dad arranged for me to have other kinds of education too. There were regular swimming lessons, popular with me because it was a great chance to cool off in the desert heat for about an hour every day or so. There were other activities too such as tennis, which I was okay with, and karate classes, which I was definitely less okay with as each class seemed to be a continual process of me getting thrown to the mat by my instructors.

I had my first gymnastics lesson too about the same time, and that quickly became the center of my universe. For me gymnastics was something that actually taught me how to fly, and I mean that quite literally. There's no feeling in the world like being able to jump up on a pair of uneven bars and then go flipping and flying as fast as I could in between them. Or, for that matter, running down and vaulting and launching myself into the air and being able to do complete loops and come back down in one piece. While it wasn't always so easy, I discovered that I had a real flair for gymnastics as my limber little body could bend and twist and flip and balance and do somersaults, and then launch into flying somersaults off of balance beams and all sorts of things like that.

For a long time gymnastics actually became so central to my life that I nearly forgot about EVA and piloting. It certainly made my wardrobe choices easier, as having gymnastics nearly every day meant I had a wardrobe full of leotards and it became nearly the only thing I wore. I mean, I could wear them at home, swim in them, put on a pair of shorts and shoes and play tennis or go outside in them, and if I needed to go anywhere with dad such as dinner or some sort of social thing at the base I could put on a nicer skirt and some good sandals or shoes and I was set. And it wasn't like there was anyone at home telling me how to dress myself as it was anyway. I pretty much did everything but sleep in my leos.

So I spent most of the rest of my single-digit years dreaming up how wonderful a gymnast I was going to be when I was older. I guess I was pretty motivated even then, I was so determined to get good at gym that I'd even start stretching out in the morning the moment I woke up. Dad was supportive in the way that he was supportive for just about everything else in my life: he'd arrange the lessons and then I'd tell him how it all went, but he rarely showed up for anything I actually did in gymnastics or swimming or really anything else.

You see, while I had good instructors and I learned an awful lot I was never actually in any competitions. Ever. Why? Because there were no other kids to compete with. My entire spread of schooling and lessons were done entirely with just instructors or the computer back at home. I never went to a real school, with real kids, of any kind.

Partly this was because of how Second Branch was set up. Like before when Second Branch was known as Area 51, we were an experimental test station and because of that it was considered hazardous duty to be here. Practically the whole operation was all top secret, and you didn't put families in places like that. Many of the people who worked here actually had families off base, and they might stay on base for a few days then go back home to their families in places like Utah and Arizona.

But not everyone did that and some people still lived on base all of the time, including the base commanders and also us because my father was the scientific director and he needed, or he wanted anyway, to live here. Some of those people did have families and they did live on base but it was nowhere near where we lived. So to summarize there were no kids in my world, and therefore no classmates nor any playmates.

It wasn't like I never came into contact with other children. Sometimes there were social events like holiday parties, where people would bring their families and I'd see kids my own age. But it was as if I lived in a different world from them. I was pretty shy about talking to any other children that I saw as a result, and so during such times I'd just hang close to my father or any other adults that I knew.

The result was that I was lonely. Very, very lonely.

There was one brief moment when that looked like it might change. At that time I was eight and there was one particular weekend when my father went away on a trip. He would go away every so often and leave me in the care of the base staff, often one or two nurses who would just supervise me during all of my lessons and make sure I got fed and into bed on time. When I asked my father where he went, he'd usually tell me he needed to go for important business, or to go to the US capital to ask for money for what they were doing, and which I sensed even at that tender age was a big frustration for dad and the others at Second Branch as it took a lot of money to build EVA and all of this other stuff and they never had enough.

Aside from just making sure I was on schedule however the nurses generally left me alone. And on that one Saturday I got sent back to the apartment building after having just my gymnastics lesson in the morning. As my dad's driver dropped me off in front I noticed a moving van in front of the tower, and there were all sorts of people moving boxes and furniture from the van to inside of the building. Standing and observing all of this was another girl that looked about my age and size. She had long black hair, dark eyes, and a dark skin tone and at first look seemed to be either black or Hispanic. The girl wore a purple dress and slip-ons, and clutched a stuffed bear as she watched her family and the movers unload the truck.

When I saw the girl I became excited and a bit nervous, as in our building I had never seen a kid my age ever show up before. Drawing up a deep breath, I decided to find out who she was. I then walked up to where she was standing, and it took her just a moment to see that someone else was there. "Oh, Hi!" she said cheerfully.

"Hi," I replied, just waving my hand.

"Do you live here?" she asked me. I nodded with enthusiasm and then she smiled. "Cool! I just moved in!" I couldn't help but smile at that. "I'm Nadia. What's your name?"

"Erin. Erin Forrestal."

"Nice to meet you. We're going to be neighbors."

"What floor do you live on?" I asked her.

"Sixteenth, I think," she replied. "Where do you live?"

"On the top floor." Nadia grew a big breath in surprise. "Really? All the way at the top?" I nodded again, now somewhat proud of my digs. "Yup. You can see everything from up there."

Then I took a chance. "Wanna come up and look?"

"Okay!"

After very quickly getting her parents to approve, Nadia came with me on the elevator as we went up to the top and our place. Once inside she was suitably impressed.

"Wow, you have so many computers in here!" she exclaimed as she saw my dad's workplace in the living room. "Is your dad a scientist?"

"He's the scientific director, which I guess makes him the boss scientist," I told her. "Come out, you can see the whole city from up here." I led Nadia to the balcony out from the living room and from there she took in the complete view of the Second Branch grounds. It was a breathtaking view and Nadia spent several minutes looking all over the valley.

"This place is so big," she told me. I pointed out to her different parts of the complex as she watched. "See, there's where all of the other scientists go, and there's the engineering buildings and then there's the security building, where they have all of these soldiers and stuff. And then there's this big airfield where airplanes come in and out all the time."

"That's awesome!" and then she asked me. "Do you go to school here too?"

I was a bit reluctant to answer at first. "Well, I kinda don't go to school…"

"You don't have to go to school?! Really?"

"I mean, I don't have school with anyone else. I get lessons on the computer or with teachers that come here."

"Wow," she pondered. "How 'come?"

"There aren't any other kids that live in this part, at least not until now."

"So, now maybe we can have lessons together then? That sounds better than just school."

"Could be," I replied. "Hey, do you want to go play in my room?"

"Okay!"

For about the first time ever I actually had another child in my room and that day we spent hours playing games on my computer or just talking about ourselves. Nadia's parents were both scientists of Indian ethnicity that moved here to from Massachusetts, where they were working at what would later be known as NERV's First Branch. As for Nadia she was wonderfully normal, although like me she had no brothers and sisters and grew up alone at home too, so we had that in common. This was sounding like it was going to be a great improvement. Interacting with another kid however did start to uncover some difficult topics I hadn't really talked to anyone else about before.

"So what does your mom do?" Nadia asked me. I was very hesitant to answer at first. "Um, well, she's…not here."

"Did she move away?"

"She died," I said in more quiet tone.

Nadia gasped. "Oh, no. Was it bad? Like, was she sick or something?"

"No. Just one day she left home and didn't come back." I realized that I really didn't know exactly how Mom had died, as Dad never really told me much about it.

"That must be sad," Nadia commiserated. "Who takes care of you then?"

"My dad does. Although he gets help from the other people here. Like right now he's out on a trip, so there's these nurses that come and make my dinner and spend the night here."

"My mom and dad are always so busy," Nadia told me. "I get lots of other lessons outside of school too, though. Like I do piano, and then I have math tutor, and then I do gymnastics on the weekends."

This was shaping up to be my best day ever. "You do gymnastics too?!" I excitedly exclaimed.

"I do, but I'm not very good at it."

"I can teach you! I can totally teach you!" It was like Santa Claus had suddenly dropped a Best Friend Ever right into my bedroom window. "Here, wear this first!" I jumped to my dresser and picked out a leo for Nadia, I had a purple one with no sleeves that I never wore so I tossed that to her and then slipped off my own shorts to reveal the green and white striped leo I was wearing. She quickly changed and then for the next hour or so I taught her how to do proper flips in my room, along with some other stretching and things I had learned. Nadia picked up everything pretty fast, even being able to do full splits by the time we were done.

By the end of the afternoon we were both exhausted from all of the play but happy nonetheless to have found each other. We lay on my bedroom floor in the middle of the mess my room had become and then just talked to each other as the sun started to go down.

Nadia turned to me as we lay next to each other on the carpet. "Erin?"

"Yeah?"

"You're really cool!"

I blushed bright red at that. "Gee, thanks!"

"Do you want to know my secret?" I looked over at her, not sure what to expect. "Um, okay?"

She looked up at the ceiling, biting her lip in anxiety, then she spoke. "I didn't use to look like this."

"What do you mean?"

"My face. I used to have a sort of defect, when I was born." I looked at her more carefully. "I don't see anything wrong."

"I know, that's because I've had a bunch of operations. I'm better now, but when I was little my parents didn't used to let me have friends because they were afraid someone was going to tease me."

"Well, you seem pretty normal now," I told her quite honestly. She didn't say anything, but just nodded and smiled. I think she felt good to finally have someone to really talk to, and so did I. "I've got a secret too."

"Really, what is it?"

"My dad, he's building this, like, giant robot thing in a secret lab here."

"Yeah?"

"And I'm going to be the one to pilot it?"

"You're gonna what?!"

"I'm going to pilot my own giant robot! I mean, it's not ready yet. But I'm all of this training and stuff one of these days I'm going to ride inside of it."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Fight these big alien-like monsters! And save the Earth! At least that's what my dad says. Anyway, it's a really big secret so don't tell anyone."

"Oh, okay."

I felt like I needed to enforce my secret a little better than that. I sat up off the floor and offered my hand to her. "Pinkie Promise?" I extended my right pinkie and she wrapped hers against mine. "Pinkie Promise!" We both smiled and giggled at that for minutes afterwards.

Once the sun went down my nurses showed up with my dinner and instructions from my dad for more homework at the computer. Nadia bid goodbye to go back to her new apartment and then found the elevator to go downstairs. While I stood outside she waived at me with a big smile as the doors closed, still wearing the purple leotard I had loaned her, and even though I was sad to see her go I felt incredibly happy as finally I wasn't alone.

I woke up the next morning excited to go and see my new playmate. I already had the plan in my head to go and see her in her own place this time, and maybe also show her the swimming pool nearby. So once out of bed I searched around for a good swimsuit (I had about a dozen of those too, usually intermingled with my leos) and picked out a navy blue Speedo racing one-piece. Pulling on a pair of white shorts over it and finding a hat, I then walked out of my bedroom to get breakfast and get ready for another fun day ahead.

To my surprise sitting at the dining table was Dad. The nurses were gone, and Dad had instead returned early from his trip. On the table was breakfast cereal and toast, and orange juice as we normally had in the mornings. "Dad!" I exclaimed in surprise, "you're home early!"

"Yes," he said to me with a forced smile. "Erin, please sit down." His tone of voice was more serious than he normally was, so I knew something bad probably happened. I sat down at the table at my usual spot and looked up at him.

He got right to the point. "Erin, did you tell anyone about what we're doing here?"

When in doubt, try innocence. "Like what?"

"Did you tell anyone about EVA? And about you piloting EVA?" It was then when I realized what was going on. "Well…" I said, trying to think of the best way to say this without my father being upset. My father rarely lost his temper but when he did lose it he was horrifying. "Well, not strangers or anything."

"But you did tell someone, didn't you?" It was then when I learned what had happened, and apparently Nadia had been quite the chatterbox when she returned home last night, with the contents of our "pinkie promised" double-secret conversation somehow getting back to him. Seeing I wasn't going to get out of this I told my dad everything and while he wasn't flaming mad he wasn't going easy on me with this either.

"But dad," I told him, trying to make an excuse and afraid that I might lose my only friend. "She lives here now. She's my best friend. She isn't going to tell anyone else about me anyway."

"Yet she didn't keep your secret when she got home, did she?" I had no other way left to me except to agree with him, and I reluctantly nodded.

He got out of his chair and walked over to me. I just sat there, dejected, as my own desire to confide in another had gotten me into trouble. "Erin," he said in a softer tone as he kneeled on the floor next to me. "You must be very careful. What we do here is very important, and there are lots of enemies out there that would try to harm us."

This was the first time I had ever heard about having any enemies, other than these Angel-things that were going to come someday. "But…but Nadia's nice. She's not like that."

"She is not, but she is foolish and so were her parents. We were fortunate to watch over this very carefully, before this information could get out."

Fear crept into me, fear that I was going to lose my one and only friend. "What's going to happen?"

"I have made it very clear to them that what you said is not to ever be revealed to anyone else. I believe that they will not do so after the arrangements that I have made."

"But…" I didn't like my dad's tone of voice at all, and I knew it meant something bad. "But can I see her again?"

"No."

I didn't know what to do or say. Here was the best thing in the world and suddenly my dad was taking it away just because of a conversation between two girls. I swallowed hard and tried to think of any way to plead my case as tears started to run down my cheeks. "But Dad! Can't we just be friends?"

"I'm afraid not, dear. The risk of something like this happening again is just too great."

There, he went and said it: this wasn't just about Nadia, this was about me never having anyone else to play with ever. It wasn't an accident that I had no classmates or any other kids around. My current situation was something that Dad had very much intended, all of it to keep me isolated.

At that moment I didn't care anything about EVA or piloting or any important thing to save the world from giant monsters, I just wanted to feel the way I did yesterday, where there was someone that I could just be me with and act like little girls, like I was supposed to. I felt like there was this big, giant gaping hole in my heart, but little did I know then just how wide it was and what else had caused it to be ripped open. I tried to put up a stiff fight and not disappoint the man in front of me, the man that despite the pain I felt I loved very much. But I couldn't do it, my heart was just torn asunder.

"Daddy," I said as my face was flushed red with tears, my little hands trembling with emotion. "I just want to have friends! I just want to play with someone! Why can't I do that?"

My father took his hands and held me by my own arms. Softening the tone of his voice, he said to me "am I not your friend, too?" I didn't reply but still crying I nodded my head.

"And all of your teachers and coaches, some of which come from very far away just for you, are these not your friends also?" I still nodded, but knew my point was not being made. "But I can't play with them," I said softly. "I just want someone else to play with."

"I understand, dear," he said to me, "but you need to also understand that the burdens that both you and I face are very unique. We're not like other people, and because of that it can be very lonely." My dad continued with his position, looking me in my teary, reddening eyes. "Your mother understood how important this was, important enough to give her life to make sure you had this chance."

Dad had never talked much about Mom after she had died, but brining her up in this suddenly had my attention. I didn't just miss not having friends, I had missed not having mom too. That her death was somehow related to dad's work seemed to make the obstacle of loneliness only that much more. I looked up at him, sniffling as my nose started to run after so much crying.

"Erin," he told me, "you need to be brave, and you need to be careful with you heart. Never give it to anyone, always keep your true self hidden. One day you'll understand why this is so." I certainly didn't understand at the time, but I tried to nod while still crying, to show that I did understand. My throat was so choked up that I couldn't say anything further.

After a couple of minutes more Dad left me in the apartment, with instructions not to leave until he said I could. I didn't protest, I knew I couldn't. I sat at the table and tried to eat but found myself with no appetite. Instead I ran off to the balcony.

Looking downward I saw the moving trucks, the same ones that were here yesterday. They were again in front of the building, now taking the same boxes and furniture that were carried into the building earlier and returning them up the ramps into the trucks. Next to the vans was a minivan and I saw two adults who I assumed were Nadia's parents. They hurried into the van, followed by Nadia.

Just as she was about to board the van she looked up at the tower. From thirty stories up it was hard to see much but it seemed like she was looking up at the balcony above. I waived my hand at her but either she didn't see it or just didn't respond. Instead her mother whisked her into the van and slammed the door. A few seconds later the van left, followed by the trucks, and travelled to the road that led outside of the base. Despite how hot it was that day I got the chills, and then spent the rest of the day underneath the blankets in my bed trying to keep warm and away from the outside world.

* * *

 _In reading the Evangelion manga I had always liked that we saw a lot more of Shinji's personal development before he went to Tokyo-3. We knew of the difficulties he had getting along with his aunt's family, and of how isolated he felt prior to his encounter with EVA. We didn't see much of this same development in the franchise for the other pilots, especially for Asuka who seems to go from age four to fourteen at full speed tsundere. I always thought it might be interesteing to know what Asuka was like at age ten or eleven. There's at least one fanfic story in there for someone who wants to take it on._

 _I felt it important to see how our pilots become what they are, and do that I have to start at the beginning. Erin has some similar experiences with the others but also there are things unique to her situation. Her isolation is quite deliberate, and if you've had parents or guardians that were a bit on the paranoid side you know how that can feel._


	3. The Princess of Second Branch

By the time I was ten there were a lot of changes taking place at Groom Lake. I mentioned earlier that I usually referred to Groom Lake as Second Branch, as in the second branch of NERV. However before I was ten NERV wasn't actually called NERV back then. Instead we were just officially known as the "U.N. Groom Lake Engineering Activity," although nearly everyone here then just called it Groom Lake. You weren't actually supposed to use the term "Area 51" but some people still called it that.

Once NERV officially took over Second Branch grew much larger, and all of a sudden there were many more buildings and a lot more people working here. For me however, my circumstances were still pretty much the same: I was the only kid I knew who lived here. My life was still pretty much the same as it was before with days of schooling by computer or by tutors, followed by training in the afternoons and evenings. I still was taking gymnastics at least four or five days a week and I had to admit I was getting pretty good at it, but my coaches were my only audience as I was still never entered into any competitions. Besides that there were all of my other lessons and added to that my father had started to introduce me to computer coding through lessons that he himself created. Quite often he'd have them as part of my daily lesson plan and I'd spend an hour or more each day learning the basics of what a computer language was and what it did. I worked hard to get pretty good at that too, figuring that maybe it could be a way that I could spend more time with him.

Spending more time with dad proved to be difficult, especially as he now had a new toy to play with. That year came the MAGI, a set of supercomputers that Dad helped engineer along with some other scientists here and in Japan. The original MAGI system was in Tokyo-3, but my dad got the second one and it quickly became his best friend and virtual mistress. He would spend hours and hours in front of his own terminal either in his office or at our apartment. Between EVA and MAGI he didn't have a whole lot of time for anything else, including me.

Given that I couldn't be allowed to be a normal kid, I figured maybe I could just be a small adult instead. I lost interest in toys and simple things and spent more time reading when I wasn't in classes or training. Also, bored with much of my solitary life inside our penthouse and now interested in all of the changes that were taking place at Second Branch I began exploring the base on my own.

The way that started was one day when, bored as I was of being stuck at home on days when lessons were canceled, I bugged dad about taking me to his work. Initially reluctant he finally agreed and then, to make sure I could get into the building in the first place, even asked the security staff to cut me my own ID badge. Now I was officially NERV staff, with my own photo ID access card, which I thought was pretty cool.

After I got the badge dad took me to his office and I saw the MAGI system for the first time. He had a pretty large office, actually, bigger than our townhouse, with one room for his desk and one room for just the MAGI's terminals. Underneath that there were three giant steel chambers that he explained each had a part of the computer in it. Printed on the cylinders were the nicknames of each of the MAGI units: Larry, Moe, and Curly. When I asked Dad who were those people he named the computers after, he just chuckled and said I was too young to remember.

I got a grand tour of his office than ended in me being given a book with instructions to keep to myself in another one of the rooms while Dad sat in front of the MAGI's main terminal and worked like crazy. I really tried not to interrupt him when he got intense like that, and I was never quite sure what he was doing but whatever it was it took a lot of concentration for him. Occasionally he'd bark orders over the phone to someone else to adjust or fix something and that went on for hours.

Bored out of my mind and not wanting to read some kid's book about dinosaurs for the sixth time I decided to do some exploring. Much to my delight my ID badge was able to get me into other parts of the larger building where we were and then I started to simply walk down each corridor to see what everyone else was doing.

That's how it started. On that particular day I must have spied on a dozen or so different laboratories, most of them filled with people wearing white-coats doing stuff that had something to do with making the EVA units. I was generally cautious to not get in anyone's way, although if something did look remotely interesting I'd stick around for a bit and spy on it. And most everyone who worked there didn't seem to mind me being around just as long as I kept out of the way.

On that particular week my gymnastics coach was gone on leave, so I had afternoons much to myself. The following day I just showed up again with Dad after swim or whatever other lesson I still had, and then he'd go work in his room while I'd go lurking around. Pretty soon I got a pretty good feel for how the buildings were laid out, and I even discovered that there were tunnels between buildings so that you didn't have to go outside in the hot, dry weather and then in the front door of the next building if you needed to go from one place to another. Everything in the Engineering, Research, and Fabrication areas was interconnected through these underground tunnels, which made getting around pretty easy once you know the layout.

On the third day I passed by one office again and one of the scientists there, a woman, recognized me from the first time I was there. I just waived "hi" to her again but she stopped me.

"Erin, isn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am. Erin Forrestal."

She carefully took a closer look at my ID badge. "What's the matter, don't you have school?" It was about two o'clock in the afternoon.

"I don't have regular school, ma'am. But I took all of my lessons earlier today already." The lady scientist smiled at me. "Well, would you like something to do instead of wondering around the laboratories?"

My eyebrows shot up at the prospect of actual, important work. "Sure!" She then took a sealed envelope from her desk and handed it to me. "I need you to give this to Doctor Wang in Fabrication 1B. That's in the next building. Do you know how to get there?" I nodded enthusiastically, knowing exactly where that was. "Yes!"

"Okay, then. Please try to get it there in the next fifteen minutes, it's important that he gets this but unfortunately I can't break off from what I'm doing just now."

Eager to please and thankful that at least someone talked to me like a regular person, I replied "Okay, I've got this!" and then before she could say thanks I was running out the door and down the hallway.

It took me about ten minutes of running to reach the next building, and to be sure I used the staircase downwards towards the intra-building tunnels and then through and underground to the next building. Then, panting from sprinting because I was really trying to rush I got into the elevator. Inside were a bunch of security officers and for a minute I thought dad had caught up with me getting out of hand. But they paid me no mind, one even smiled and winked at me, and then once at the first floor I darted out of the opening doors and ran to Dr. Wang's office.

Once at the Fabrication Lab I found Dr. Wang, an elderly Asian scientist in a white coat, balding hair and trifocals. Somewhat surprised to see me, he took the envelope and checked the contents inside as I waited and caught my breath. Satisfied, he gave me a small smile and then took a wrapped mint candy from his desk and gave it to me. "Thank you, Miss. This was a big help!" He told me, then went back to his laboratory work.

So that was the start of my first job. It paid in candy and whatever else I managed to get for rewards from those who needed me to walk or run documents and other packages from one place to another within Second Branch's labs. But for me not only was it a relief for my boredom but also a way to finally meet people and I met them by the dozens: scientists, technicians, engineers, secretaries, security guards, bus drivers, and anyone else who worked in or near the laboratories. Some were annoyed with having a kid around, but most were at least friendly and a few I got to know in the process. It made me feel like a part of this place too, and not just the boss' daughter.

Strangely, my father didn't really object. Maybe he saw it as a way to keep me occupied and out of his hair, or maybe also it was a way to check up on everyone else who worked for or with him. Certainly if I wasn't well treated I'd speak up about it to him, and given my dad's temper no one wanted that.

By the time my gymnastics coach came back we re-arranged my schedule so that some days I'd do my messenger "business" in the labs and then do gym at night, which suited me just fine. But after another week of running around to exhaustion I was starting to have second thoughts about my job, not to mention a realization of just how spread out Second Branch really was. I wondered if there was any way to get around the tunnels faster: at home I had a bicycle but I barely rode it, it was too big for the elevators and I couldn't take it down stairs. Then I had an idea: after ordering what I needed on-line (something I was allowed to do with Dad's permission) I got a new pair of tennis shoes, but ones that had wheels implanted into the soles. All I had to do was click my soles and out the wheels came and I could go skating down the hallways and tunnels at top speed.

Within a month I had become an institution at Second Branch and everyone knew who I was, and I now had hundreds of other people at NERV who I could talk to, so it was definitely an improvement but I was about to find out it wasn't without its pitfalls.

On that day one of my dad's drivers had taken me from home to the labs after lunch, and I was to hang around there until about early evening when I'd get a quick bite and then go off to gym. For my courier duties I had my own "uniform" which usually consisted of one of my gym leos and a pair of shorts, plus my skater/runners, knee pads and skater gloves (the kind without finger tips) and in case I needed to go outside a white floppy sun hat and sunglasses (Daring me, I didn't like wearing a helmet). I also had a messenger bag with some cartoon mouse decorated on it that I'd use to carry stuff so that I wouldn't drop it. Often I'd stop by Cranial Development Engineering first where Dr. Belknap was, she was the scientist who first started using me as a messenger.

When I got there that day Dr. Belknap was all ready for me. "Good afternoon, Miss Erin."

"Good Afternoon," I said in a cheerful tone. She prepared a set of envelopes but then paused to look at my ID badge. "Have you ever been to the AE Lab before?" I shook my head, as I didn't even know where that was.

"I'm not surprised," she replied as she noted the color of my badge. "You have a black-level clearance?"

"Um, I guess so. I never really noticed."

"Everyone has a color level, that's their security level. Black is the same level as your father's. It pretty much means you can go anywhere on the base."

That got me excited, as there were still so many areas left for me to explore. "Anywhere?!"

"Well, I wouldn't go into the nuclear plant if I were you, but pretty much your badge should get you anywhere you needed to go." To me that seemed logical, as I'd need to stick to Dad wherever he went, and he went everywhere when he wasn't working in his lab. "I guess you can probably get into AE Lab." She then handed me a pair of envelopes. "Take these and then go to the elevator. Instead of just pressing the floor button, insert your ID card first and then press B4 and B5 together at the same time." It seemed like a complicated instruction but I followed along. "When you get there, there's only one office. Just give it to the man that's there and you're done."

"That's it?"

"That's it. It might be a little spooky down there, but I think you'll be alright. If you can't make it down there just come back and return these to me." I nodded, took my payment from her desk (which in Dr. Belknap's case consisted of little wrapped chocolate bars), and then jogged off and out the door.

The elevator she was referring to was down the end of the building, so I jutted out my wheels and started skating, careful to avoid running into anyone in the hallway. I fancied myself a pretty good skater: despite my knee pads and gloves I rarely fell, because I've got that gymnast balance and all. So after another minute I reached the elevator and stepped inside, careful to retract my wheels before I walked in.

Once the doors closed I did as Dr. Belknap instructed, unsure of what would happen. Once I put in my ID card and pressed B4 and B5 the floor display light above showed "B9" and then we went plunging downward.

When the doors opened the area just outside was nearly pitch black except for small LED lights on the floor. It was quite dark there, and for a long moment I wondered if I could pull this off or would I just get more scared and then go running back upstairs. I really didn't want to run back, and despite the place giving me the absolute creeps I sort of wanted to know where this was. So I walked out. The doors closed behind me and it was dark, and eerily quiet.

There was a single hallway that led forward. I remember the place being really cold, enough to make me want to bring a jacket the next time I came here. I hugged my arms for warmth and then proceeded down the hallway. Lit up on one sign as I walked forward was something that read "ARTIFICAL EVOLUTION LABORATORY."

"Hello?" I called out as I walked cautiously, "Is anyone here?" There wasn't any reply and I became scared enough of this place to want to just bug out and run back to the elevators until I saw a single doorway to one side. It was open, and some faint light came out of it.

I walked through and saw something that unlike the well-organized and clean laboratories upstairs looked like Doctor Frankenstein's summer home, or maybe it was his winter home as it was so cold. All around was all sorts of equipment like chemical tubes and beakers and so on, plus other big computers and things I didn't know the name for all over. There was a bubbling sound that I figured must have been coming from some strange experiment whoever was here was running. Maybe this is where they kept the aliens that crashed in Area 51, I figured.

"Hello?" I called out again as I very carefully walked through, looking for anything that appeared to be a regular desk with an in box that I could just drop my packages in and skate out. Looking around a bit more I found one large glass enclosure that had a human hand inside, not connected to anything else. Curious despite my fear, I put my small hands to the glass and looked at the hand. Then in an instant the hand started twitching all by itself.

I screamed at the top of my lungs and turned around, ready to bolt out of there messenger job or not. It was then that I bumped into the man who ran the place. Standing just behind me was a large, heavy set older man with a balding head and wide moustache, and circular glasses that covered his eyes like mirrors, and he was dressed in a white lab coat. Suddenly surprised by the guy in front of me, I screamed again.

The man just calmly looked at me. "Bon jour," he said in accented English. "Welcome to our little _chateau_."

"W…w…who are you?" I asked him, trembling and leaning up against the glass chamber.

The older man introduced himself. "Mademoiselle, I am Doctor Foch. Don't be alarmed." I didn't say anything quite yet, forgetting the reasons why I was down there in the first place. He looked at me quizzically. "And what brings you here?"

I stalled for a bit as I tried to think, still afraid of the mad scientist who had popped out of nowhere. "Um..umumum…Oh, yeah!" I reached into my messenger bag and pulled out the two envelopes Dr. Belknap gave me. "These are for you!" I thrust the envelopes towards the old professor but he didn't take them, instead he hobbled over to one side of the room and opened up a cabinet. "It's not often I get visitors down here," he spoke to me as he took several things out of the cabinet. "I know something of how to treat young ladies, so do please mind my mess and have a seat." I looked around for anything there was to even sit on and found a small circular table with a mess of papers, beakers, flash drives, and old drinking cups. I then cautiously sat down on a nearby chair and in a minute the old doctor brought with him two clean cups and a box. He set down the cups, one in front of me and one in front of him and then set the tin box down. He turned his back for a moment and walked to the other side of the office, and as he did so I examined the tin box, which looked very artistic in its decoration with lots of French writing.

Dr. Foch reappeared with a teapot in his hand, and promptly poured tea in my cup and then in his. He then sat down and found another, smaller box on the table. Opening it up he offered it to me. "Sugar?" he asked. I nodded and promptly took two cubes and dropped them in my tea. Admittedly I wasn't a big fan of tea but I felt the need to play along and hey, he was offering me sugar. He took five cubes himself and dumped them in and then started stirring them in, motioning to the tin box from France. " _Servez-vous s'il vous plait_ ," he said to me in French and then in English "Please help yourself." Not sure what I was being offered, I took the tin and opened it and found a set of wafer-thin circular cookies inside. Still a bit cautious, I took one and then gently took a bite out of it. It was hands-down the best cookie I had ever tasted, with a rich buttery flavor and a nice crunchy texture that just melted in my mouth. I finished the first cookie right away and then took another one.

I have to admit I felt a lot more comfortable after that cookie. Dr. Foch just leaned back in the chair and took small sips from his teacup, looking on as I enjoyed my reward for this document drop. Now more relaxed, I let my curiosity take the lead again. "Um, sir?"

"It's Doctor Foch, Madamoiselle Forrestal," he replied to me, "Or just Bernard, if you like."

"Well, doctor, what was that hand in the glass jar for? Was that a _real_ hand?" Foch shrugged. "I made that hand."

"You _made_ it?"

"It's synthetic, created by stitching together human tissue combined with ways to grow cells any way you want."

"You mean like stem cells?" I asked. His eyebrows raised just a bit. "Very good, you know about those. Yes, a bit like that."

"Why are you making that hand? Is it for someone to have a new one?"

"It's a bit of an experiment, but eventually we will be making a larger one. For your Evangelion when it's nearly ready."

Now that got my attention. "That's for the EVA?"

"Yes. The human hand is never really appreciated for the complex mechanism that it is. In the case of the Evangelion, not only do we have to reproduce the hand but we have to make it to scale, yet it still needs to be as complex and as nimble as your own hands."

"So you're making stuff for the EVA down here?"

"Oh, yes. This place is one of your father's best kept secrets. When he's not hacking into other people's computers he keeps me busy with all of these components that he wishes to be made for his grand project."

"Wow. I had no idea."

"As such I unfortunately don't get many visitors, so I do try to be hospitable to anyone that manages to find their way down here."

Speaking with my mouth full, I replied "If I had known you had such…mppgh…good cookies down here I would have come sooner." Doctor Foch just smiled and took another sip from his tea.

"When will they finish building it?" I asked him. Foch was thoughtful. "Perhaps in another three to four years it will be ready for you to pilot."

I gulped down hard on my tea after hearing that. That I was to the be the pilot of the EVA was not known to anyone else other than Dad or I. Memories of what happened before with the other girl were still fresh in mind. I didn't reply to him but the doctor narrowed his glance at me. "You do know this is all for you, don't you mademoiselle?"

"I'm not supposed to talk about it," I said to him with a more quiet voice.

"Well, I won't tell anyone else so your secret's safe. I'm not allowed to interact with much of anyone around here anyway." After hearing that I couldn't help but think of myself, as I wasn't much different than this guy was when it came to being locked up.

After giving him the documents I brought and having another cookie Dr. Foch bid me _adieu_ and I went walking back to the elevator, having learned a few new things about Dad and the EVA in the last half an hour. I made a mental note to come here if I had more time on my hands later, as old Bernard was interesting and those butter cookies were killer.

I had gymnastics that evening and by all accounts had a pretty good night, finally making it back to the penthouse around nine-thirty. Even though I had an early dinner before gym Dad would sometimes have one of the other staff lay out cake or something in the kitchen for him and me to eat later at night, and when I got home I found a nice sponge cake sitting on the table. I promptly sat down and cut myself a slice, as Dad walked back from his computer desk to the table to see me and get himself a piece.

"Good evening, dear," he greeted me.

"Hi, Dad," I said as I stuffed cake in my face.

"How was your lesson today?"

I had a broad smile on my face as he asked. "The coach gave me a Nine-Point-Oh on my floor exercise today! That's the best I've ever done on floor."

Dad nodded approvingly. "Very good."

Feeling in a good mood, I decided to push my luck. "Do you think I could, maybe, go into a competition? I think I could do really well." He didn't answer right away, I'm sure even then his brain was already running through all of the possible drawbacks of me going out of Second Branch and having actual contact, no matter how indirect, with actual other people that were not his employees. "We'll see about it, and that's not a no." I smiled at him and gulped down the rest of the cake, happy that he was at least giving me that much hope. "Thanks!"

After eating the cake I needed to wash it down, so I promptly went to the refrigerator and got myself some milk out of a carton. "Dad, what's AE Laboratory?"

I turned around and saw dad's face, which had suddenly seemed drained. "How do you know about that?"

"I was there today," I chatted away, not quite yet picking up on Dad's changed mood. "Dr. Belknap needed me to run some documents down there. There's this really cool lab down there with this old French guy who's growing an actual hand in this tank! He seemed to really know a lot about the EVA. Anyway he had these really good cookies and…"

Dad's fist came swinging down hard on the table, enough to bounce the sponge cake right off its stand and all over the place. "WHAT DID I TELL YOU BEFORE ABOUT TALKING ABOUT EVA?!"

Frightened by Dad's outburst, I dropped the cup of milk in my hands onto the floor. "But Dad, he already knew! He knew about me being a pilot already! It's not a secret if…" My dad took several steps towards me and I was fearful that he might actually hit me, something that he had never done before. "Erin, you are never, never, NEVER to go down there again! Do you understand?!"

"But, Daddy, I wasn't trying to…" He got within arms' reach and yelled right at me. "NEVER GO DOWN THERE AGAIN!" By this point I had burst into tears, and trembling all over my body I turned around and ran straight to my room. Dad had a temper but before now he never had an outburst this bad towards me. This time his voice was so loud it seemed to shake everything around us. My face flush red and my little body shaking hard, I ran straight for my bed and crashed into it, burying my face in my pillow and crying out my eyes. I hadn't truly understood what had made him so angry and it wasn't my idea to go down to the dungeon anyway. My heart was broken however, as what had seemed like a great day had again turned into a disaster. I didn't even bother to go take a bath that night, I just kept crying into my pillow until I fell asleep.

I awoke the next day, finding myself on my bed still dressed in my gym clothes. With memories about what happened the night before still burning hot in my brain I quietly slipped to my bathroom to take off my clothes and shower myself off. At that age I usually didn't shower unless I somehow didn't have time, but that morning I did it. I went about the rest of my morning hygiene and then went to go change into something else. I kept quiet, not sure if dad was still in the apartment and if I was going to get screamed at again when I got out my bedroom door. It was Sunday and I didn't have any lessons that day, so I picked out a cotton playsuit that was grey with green stripes and then took a deep breath after I dressed.

Gingerly stepping out into the living room I took a look around and didn't see my dad in the apartment. Figuring the coast was clear and feeling hungry, I went to the kitchen and got myself some breakfast: cold cereal, muffins, and orange juice. By this age I was able to pretty much feed myself breakfast without help, so I got everything I needed including some strawberries to mix with the cereal and headed to the dining room.

When I entered I saw Dad standing by the dining room table, dressed sharply in a white suit with tie. Dad often made a big effort with his appearance, and it was unusual not to see him dressed nice but today he looked particuarly clean and neat. Despite that I really didn't want to see him just now. "G'morning, Dad," I muttered as I put my stuff on the table. "Good morning," he said in a kinder tone that the night before. He then sat down.

I tried to keep myself busy by putting together my cereal but Dad then started talking. "Erin, about last night…"

"I'm sorry, Dad," I replied, trying to cut off any upcoming criticism headed my way.

"I'm sorry too," he told me. "I think maybe I've just been too busy with work and all." Not really wanting to argue with that I nodded and started on my cereal. "Erin, dear," he continued, "how about we celebrate your birthday today."

My eyebrows shot up. "Dad, my birthday's not until September."

"Well, I have a trip planned that week unfortunately but I decided as today I have more time off than usual, maybe we can make today…special."

Not really sure what to expect, I shrugged. "Okay."

"Finish your breakfast, and we'll go out as soon as you're ready."

Within about ten minutes I had finished everything, so Dad took me downstairs and got into his own car. Dad often didn't drive himself, as he had people who could do that for him while he worked in the car, but he did have a big black Mercedes Benz in the garage beneath our apartment building and today we drove in it, which was definitely telling me today would be different whatever happened. Both of us were quiet as he drove into the R&R section of Second Branch, which was about fifteen minutes away.

R&R is usually where people would go when they wanted to blow off stress after working and it resembled a shopping mall. I mostly knew R&R from the arcades, and they had a pretty good sized one there, but also for the restaurants of which there were a dozen with everything from pizza to steak and Mexican food. There was also a move theatre and several shops that sold anything you might personally need such as aspirin, toothbrushes, or stationary. Some clothing stores were there too, although I never really went into any of those as they were all for grown-ups.

Dad parked in front of the R&R building and we both went inside. From the front he led me by the hand up the escalator and to a second-story storefront that I had never seen before. On its windows printed the store name "DaySpa." I was about to be very surprised.

Waiting for us in the front lobby were two ladies with powder pink-colored uniforms and name badges. "Hello, Doctor Forrestal," the two ladies spoke in unison as we entered. My dad was cordial and polite as he often was with strangers. "Good morning. As promised I have brought you Erin here," he looked at me as he spoke. "You have everything all arranged?"

The older of the two ladies spoke. "Yes, sir. We're all ready. Just leave her to us." At that point my dad told me this would take a few hours and he'd pick me up when we were done and go get something to eat. Not sure of what else to expect I just nodded and kept quiet and waited for the two ladies.

With my dad now out of the way the older one kneeled down to my level as the other girl went and got something out of a back locker. "Hello, Erin. It's good to meet you." She offered me a hand and I shook it. I was still pretty nervous, not sure what was going to happen next. "What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Why, transform you, of course!" she said. "Everyone here at this place has their jobs and we have ours, and our is to take little girls and make princesses out of them." She had a friendly manner that made me feel more at ease, although I was still a little nervous about this. I wasn't completely inexperienced with getting something like this done, I did have my hair cut about once a month at the same place my dad did, but that guy was an old barber and it was nothing like this.

The other girl produced a bathrobe and a set of slippers and handed them to me. "The robe is a little big for you and so are the shoes, but this should be okay for the back. Now if you'll come with me."

I was still a little scared. "This isn't going to hurt, is it?" She just smiled back at me "Not at all."

They took me to the back rooms and explained a bit about what I'd be doing that day, which seemed like a lot of different steps. The first step however was to get very clean. I was given a locker and told to undress, and then they'd prepare a bath for me in the back.

Admittedly I wasn't really crazy about having two complete strangers giving me a bath, but they were friendly and apparently my dad had rented out the entire spa for the day, so there weren't any other customers just a few of the ladies on staff and me in my birthday suit. The bath itself was warm and bubbly and I spent a lot time just soaking in it, feeling relaxed enough to nearly fall asleep.

After I dried off and had my oversized robe tied on, I went to another station where a third lady was waiting. She carefully washed my hair and then proceeded to cut and style it while the younger staff person started to work on my feet, working on any calluses and gently filing down and trimming my nails. They did the same for my hands and let me choose a nail polish color, me going with a bright red. They even did a little nail art on the hands and toes, putting on a tiny American flag in a couple of places. To my face the girls added a bit of makeup too, just some lipstick, mascara, and eye shadow, but it was enough to make me seem more like a small adult than a little kid, and I was okay with that.

I looked at myself in the mirror and saw how they did the haircut, it was now trimmed short like I usually wore it but they now styled my hair with bangs in the front. It looked a lot better than it ever did before, so that made me happy. Happy enough to be daring.

"So, Erin," the older of the three ladies asked me. "Do you like everything so far?" I nodded emphatically. "Is there anything else you'd like us to do?" I took a breath and then went for it.

"Can I get my ears pierced?"

A half an hour later I was led from the spa section, still in my robe but now with two tiny emerald-colored studs in my earlobes. I was so happy to get them that I couldn't stop looking at myself in the mirror and touching them. The staff finally managed to coax me from my self-admiration and get me into the adjoining room. There stood another lady with two racks of clothes and another one of shoeboxes. "Hello, young lady," she said as I entered. "Now that you're cleaned up, would you like to pick out something to wear?"

On the racks she showed me several outfits, all sized appropriately for me. Some were casual but most were pretty dressy and I wasn't really sure what would look good on me. After some stalling on my part the woman picked out three outfits that she thought were suitable including a white sleeveless party dress with embroidered flower patterns that I would wear for today. I was a little more decisive about the shoes and immediately selected a pair of fancy white strappy sandals with the highest heels they had, then also selected another pair of polished white ballet flats for the rest of my outfits. A few minutes later I was changed and into my new outfit, and sat down for some final touches, the whole experience ending when they put a small silver tiara on my head as the other ladies gathered around and clapped, officially crowning me the Princess of Second Branch.

My father met me outside the DaySpa and seeing that I was very pleased with my transformation, announced that my early birthday present was that I'd get to do all of that again once every three months. I was elated and hugged my dad right there. As always he seemed uncomfortable with that much affection but somehow he still managed and I was glad that he did. He then took me by the hand again and we went walking further down R&R to the other side where the restaurants were.

A new Chinese restaurant had recently opened up at the far end, and we were welcomed inside by an older Asian man with a tuxedo. Dad had already made arrangements and we were led to the back. I had never been in a Chinese restaurant before, and some of the décor was just a bit strange, not to mention the giant live crabs I saw crawling around inside of fish tanks that were mounted inside of the walls.

We were both seated in a small round table in a back room that was just for ourselves, and after being sat down the old man asked me to pick up the pair of chopsticks were on the table. I did so and followed his impromptu lesson for the next few minutes on how to eat properly, finally managing to get the hang of it after a few failing tries to pick up rice out of a bowl of rice he had set out in front. I was still given a fork at the end just in case I got too hungry and couldn't manage the chopsticks.

The waiters proceeded to come and gave us a succession of several dishes, starting with soup and working its way through vegetables, chicken, beef, and finally seafood. While it didn't even taste like American food I didn't mind it at all, having learned not to be too picky of an eater by this point in my life. Through the meal my dad and I engaged in small talk, and for the first time in a while we were both relaxed enough to really talk to each other and even laugh together about crazy things in his office.

The final dish was fried shrimp with walnut cream sauce, something that once I tasted it I had no idea how I had lived so long without eating this. They were very delicious, and I proceeded to stuff myself with as many as I could eat until I was nearly bursting out of my new dress.

Now filled to the gills with all of this delicious food, the waiters gave us dessert which consisted of this egg custard that was sweet and with a wobbly jelly texture, that one I also loved. My dad even took to the desert, and he never got enthusiastic about anything, so I figured that just this once that invisible force field around him was starting to come down.

"Did you enjoy all of this, dear?" he asked me. I nodded approvingly, feeling the whole day had been wonderful especially considering how I felt when it started. "Can we go back here again?"

"Yes, I think we can, and they do take out too so we can take it back to house."

"Yay!"

My father just smiled, and then told me wistfully "your mother always liked Chinese food."

Perhaps feeling in a very relaxed mood, or that dad was actually more talkative than he usually was, I let my curiosity get the better of me again. "How did you meet mom, anyway?"

"Oh, well, we were students together in university. It was MIT, actually."

"MIT?"

"Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It's no longer there, now we call that place First Branch."

My interest was definitely peaked. "You mean like NERV First Branch?"

"Exactly. The story is very simple really. Some of my then-friends at college prompted me to try and crack the computer in her dormitory room. I found that she actually had very good security for just a student, but I was able to get inside of her hard drive just the same, my skills were good even then. Then she found me out."

"She found you out?"

"She found me as I was intruding on her own computer, remotely. Back then they didn't have a real Internet like today. Anyway, she said that I had found out her secret."

"Wow," I said. "And then what?"

"Then she said that I needed to keep it a secret no matter what I did." My dad shrugged. "Frankly I found her amazing, she was smart and beautiful, and I had difficulty finding girls I liked anyway, so I agreed to on the condition that she would date me."

"Did she?"

"Not at first. That still took some persuading, and her family was not very fond of me. But eventually things worked out."

I had never really thought about my parents before they were my parents until today. "Oh," I said. "What did mom do? I mean, did she have a job?"

"Your mother was a scientist, and a very brilliant one. She was a major in Theoretical Mathematics, and MIT was one of the few places one could study such an esoteric field. I was more practical, in computer science. But we matched well and I never looked at anyone else after her."

"How did she die?" The words came right out of my mouth before I could think about it, and I instantly regretted it. I feared my dad would immediately blow his hot temper but to my surprise he didn't. Instead he was just quiet for a minute, then he spoke in a softer voice.

"She died in the laboratory, dear. It was an accident."

I had seen dad's work before, and honestly I couldn't see how anything they did at Second Branch's labs be all that dangerous. Unless it was like what old Bernard worked on, with growing hands inside of vats of chemicals and all. "Was it anything to do with EVA?"

"It was, I'm afraid. We were researching at the early stages of the EVA's construction, before there was even a skeleton. Your mother had a theory of how EVA was built and we relied on information from another of the laboratories who worked on EVA, one in Japan. It wasn't until much later when I found out the information we were given was false, meant to distract us from what we sought. Unfortunately, by then it was too late."

"Why doesn't mom have a grave that we can visit," I asked, always wondering why this was so.

"The body was gone after everything we did," my dad said in a flat tone. "I didn't feel like a memorial like that would be appropriate. Better to consider her just…missing."

"Like she'd maybe come back one day."

"Like that, perhaps. Or perhaps we'd go to her." My dad looked more tired than usual after he said that, and then he smiled at me a little. "I'm sure you've wanted to know that for a long time, my dear. Didn't you?"

"Kind of."

"Do you miss your mother?"

"I do. It seems like she's been gone so long now."

"It's not something you can get used to," he told me with a great sense of sadness in his voice. It was clear to me that Dad missed Mom too, a lot. For a minute he just looked at the wall behind me, where the Chinese restaurant kept all of their live fish and crabs, and then he just said at something more than a whisper.

"The world doesn't deserve to live on."

I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but I was too afraid to. Dad had become morose because I had brought up Mom. I would never bring her up again between us.

After getting home I went to my room and grabbed a camera, then proceeded to take photos of myself in the mirror with my new outfit. These were just for me, as I just wanted to keep the memory of today. While I did that I heard dad on the phone outside my bedroom and then went to him as soon as he got off.

"Erin, dear, I'm sorry but I need to go to the office."

"Now?!" I protested.

"This won't hold, I'm afraid. I am sorry." He gathered up his briefcase and his own tablet and then started for the door. "We still have leftover Chinese food so please help yourself to that if you're hungry, I may be back very late tonight."

"Okay," I said softly. He then turned and went out the door, and thus ended the best day of my childhood.

Admittedly I was a little upset about being left there on my own but really just sad, as I thought that maybe things between Dad and I could change as I got older, and I had felt like today I had taken my first real steps into being a grown-up. I didn't doubt that he loved me, but I just wished he'd sort of do that more closely and not from a distance like he always seemed to. Not seeing anything else I could do about it, I shuffled over to the balcony of our town house and watched as his staff car, the one that he had a driver for, left the building garage on its way to the laboratories and his office at the center of Second Branch. I stayed on the balcony and watched as the sun went down over the western ridge of the desert where we lived.

They had crowned me the Princess of Second Branch and for a moment I felt like it, richly appointed and gazing over my domain like royalty from a high castle tower. But in reality I was loneliest little girl in the whole world.

* * *

 _Admittedly while writing this chapter I had purchased and devoured most of a tin of rather good butter cookies from France, so I suppose real life leaked in at some point. Bernard Foch is of course a familiar face for those who have read the other Blue Rose stories, but we don't give away much here I think._

 _The sequence in the spa is kind of lengthy but I thought it was important to Erin's development to see how she tries to adapt to her circumstances and growing up "early" is one of her strategies._ _Dealing with her father is certainly a challenge for Erin and by now you see a pattern in Harrison Forrestal's personality. While there may be similarities between them he's not like Gendo Ikari. In some ways he's much worse._

 _If you've eaten Chinese food and never had Walnut Cream Shrimp I do suggest ordering it at least once, and not just at Panda Express._

 _This is the last of the childhood flashbacks, I actually split this chapter with the prior one to get the size manageable._ _Hope you enjoyed this, and please stay tuned we have a lot more to go._


	4. My Vance Problem

By the time I was thirteen I had a new job at Second Branch: Piloting. Not long after my thirteenth birthday, I was taken by my father to a new, underground facility on the outskirts of NERV-2, one that contained several secret laboratories as well as a training center and what would eventually be the home cages of the Evangelions themselves.

My EVA was still not ready by then, so I was started on a simulator and my training begun on how to operate the EVA unit. Back then the A10 neural interfaces were still being worked on, and there wasn't even LCL to use in the simulated entry plug. The piloting simulation basically played out like a giant-sized video game, where I would dress up in something like a plug suit and then operate the EVA by using voice commands. It was primitive but designed to get me used to piloting as early as possible.

Over time the simulator improved: voice commands were replaced by actually functioning nerve impulses, which mean I was learning how to control EVA with my mind and body. Then LCL was introduced into the entry plug and after a few scary moments of learning how to breathe something that was liquid I got used to working with the entry plug fully enclosed. The simulator missions themselves became more and more complex, and by the time I was actually able to activate the real Evangelion I had run through the simulator dozens if not hundreds of times. Despite all of that, it still didn't feel nearly the same as when I was in an actual entry plug, piloting an actual Evangelion.

Unfortunately even though I had managed to finally activate Unit 04 the engineers at Second Branch were still fiddling with it, so I was again told to go train on the simulator until it was ready. On that particular day I spent most of the night running missions on the EVA simulator. Nearly all of the training missions consisted of either what we'd call Defense, which was my unit defending Second branch against an attack by other units, or Offense, which was the reverse where I would attack another base that was defended by other EVAs instead. Of course, we didn't call the enemy "EVA" we'd call them Angels instead, but basically all I ever did in simulator up until now was just fight other EVA units.

By the time I got to where I was able to activate the real EVA, I was pretty good at the simulator and able clear through any game it ran on my own. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't running the simulator by myself any more.

"Hey, get the hell out of my way," came Vance's voice on the speakers. "You're in my line of fire."

It's only been a minute into the current game and he's already getting on my nerves. "He's my target, dumbass!"

"Screw that," he muttered and then within the simulated environment suddenly leaped his EVA straight over mine and ran towards our target: a purple-colored EVA that was a few hundred yards in front. I watched as the black and silver-colored EVA-03, Vance's own unit, quickly took its progressive knife and started stabbing at the purple enemy. Vance completely blocked my own firing line between my EVA and the enemy with his own unit, and kept me from knocking down the target. Really irritated with his gameplay, I decided to just remind him a little. Taking the pallet rifle in my own EVA's hands, I fired a three-round burst directly into Unit 03 from behind.

"Hey!" Vance screamed out lout, "I'm working here!"

I wasn't having any of it. "Told you you're in my way," I said in a sneer.

Despite my own friendly fire Vance still managed to make pretty short order of the enemy EVA with his knife and had it down and deactivated within a few more seconds. Then within the computer-generated environment another EVA, this one colored yellow, appeared and started firing at him. Unit 03 dove for cover while I directed my own rifle at the EVA and started shooting at it. I got a few hits but it also hit me a few times, and in this simulation AT fields didn't count so I was damaged before I could do anything else. I rolled over to a building for cover while Unit 03 peered out from another building across an intersection from me and started shooting at the yellow EVA. It took us a minute or more to subdue it, each of us firing from our own positions of cover while the target darted around and took shots at us both.

Finally Vance gave the unit the killing shot, coming up close under a barrage from his own weapons and then using his pallet rifle like a club to knock the enemy down. As nasty as he was, I did have to admit to myself the new boy fought rather well. However he was also the most selfish game hog I'd ever seen.

"Got 'em!" he called out as he pumped a few rounds into the now prone EVA from his gun. A graphic message came on stating SIMULATION COMPLETE and then the display inside of my simulated entry plug switched over to test mode. The LCL came draining out and after spitting whatever was left in my lungs, always an unpleasant thing, I got out of my throne and went for the door.

Even though we got a win over the computer, I was not happy at all with what happened, as Vance had basically killed all of the targets by himself and mostly in ways that kept me from fighting at all. He had six kills to my zero that game, and despite our team winning I had never gotten a flat Zero in any game except my first, disastrous try nine months earlier. I marched over from my simulated plug to the plug next to mine, and waited at the hatch until Vance got himself out.

Dressed in a black plug suit with red piping, Vance Vinson cut a tall and imposing figure for someone who was just fourteen. Not that it mattered. This was my game and he had just muscled his way in without any regard to what we were actually doing. As he got out of the hatch I immediately started in on him. "What the hell was that?!"

He seemed genuinely surprised I was even made. "What's your problem, girlie?"

I nearly hit him. "Don't call me girlie!"

"Okay, chickster."

"And don't call me 'chickster' either! I can fully kick your ass if I wanted to." Vance was not remotely impressed, folding his arms and sneering down on me. "Really? Oh, I'd love to see you try that."

I attempted to stay focused on what had just happened, as at least I was taking it seriously. "We're supposed to be working as a team, but you took all of my targets!"

"Funny, I don't remember that being in the rules. I thought the rules were something more like 'kill or be killed.'"

"There are six targets and we get three apiece. We're supposed to split up and take them out one by one." Vance just leaned against the plug with a smug look on his face. "Oh, and like the Angels are just going to play fair like that."

"That's the way the simulator game works," I tried to explain. "You get the top score by…"  
"Listen, babe…"

After hearing that I actually got so angry with him that I pounded him as hard as I could with my right arm. "Don't call me babe, jerkhead!" Vance barely flinched at my punch.

"Listen, _Miss Forrestal_ , in a real combat the enemy's not going to neatly present themselves right there in front of you like a game of Space Invaders. Once they pop up, one of us pins them down while the other rushes in for the kill. Given as you were way too slow in pinning them down, I just did the job for us both, which in my book makes it pretty easy for you."

"You were hogging up all of the targets!"

"I did you a favor, honey."

"DON'T' CALL ME HONEY, YOU ASSHOLE!" I didn't let him finished and tried again to give him a punch. Before I could make contact he proceeded to grab my right wrist and hold it tightly, and man was his grip tight! Fortunately for me gymnastics and EVA piloting weren't my only skills, as I swiftly took my left leg and jetted it just below his right one, and then I pulled it, tripping him down and against the side of the plug wall. He still held my wrist even as he went down and pulled me down with him, which suddenly brought me collapsed right on top of him.

For a good twenty seconds there I was laying right on top of this boy with our faces just a few inches from each other. I was shocked to even be in such a compromising position and he still had my wrist in his vice-like grip. My eyes looked directly into his with my own fury at being brought down like this, while he just gave a fox-like grin.

"Sorry, little tiger," he said to me, "I'm only here for the training. We don't have time for anything else." Furious, I wrestled out of his grip and got up from the steel flooring. I managed to get off the floor and was about to give him a kick when I saw that he was holding his head in pain.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked, not thinking that I hit him that hard.

Vance just grimaced and shook his head, and then in about a minute he cleared up a little. He was still on the cage floor, and he looked exhausted. "I, uh, I get these headaches since I came out here," Vance explained. "Must be the heat."

"Must be," I said to him coolly.

I left him there on the floor, still furious about how I was treated. I didn't want him to see how angry I was, how much he had gotten to me. Angry enough to have tears coming out of my eyes. I hated him that much.

* * *

The following day I woke up later in the morning, now normal for me as my training with the EVAs was taking place late at night and I often didn't get to bed until midnight or afterwards. As usual Dad wasn't in the apartment when I woke up, but today he left a note like he usually did, this time saying I had neither simulation nor actual unit work today. Also as usual, he wrote a reminder to destroy the note after I read it. After so many years dad was still more than a little paranoid, perhaps even more so now that EVA was active.

I still had some of my usual lessons later that day including gymnastics, so I picked out a sleeveless tank leotard, put on a white pleated skirt and runners to go with it, then out the door I went. Downstairs my dad's driver was already waiting for me.

The driver took me to the base hospital, where I would meet and have lunch with Jo Belknap. My dad didn't do "girls" stuff and when I started to go through puberty all of the help with that was delegated to his staff, in particular the nurses that I was entrusted to. One of them was Jo, who was a middle aged American and unmarried woman who I got along with while dealing with all of those changes that took place in-between being a girl and being a young adult, and we spent enough time together to establish what was my most meaningful relationship at Second Branch besides my dad. From helping me to deal with all of the physical changes I was going through Jo and I hit it off, and if I had a real confidant at NERV-2 it was her more than anyone else.

She met me in the hospital cafeteria, she was wearing a white set of nurses scrubs, her blonde hair tied back behind her. I waived to her and she motioned to what table she was going to sit at. After a few minutes to pick out my lunch, which consisted of a very healthy chicken salad and tomato juice, I took my tray and sat down across from her. Despite the small talk we started with, she sensed my bad mood almost immediately.

"So how's the new pilot?" she asked me, already knowing much about EVA due to her staff position and security clearance that came with it.

I started into her eyes, no longer willing to hide my disgust. "Stupid. I finally get someone else here my own age and he's the worse person possible."

Jo seemed nonchalant about it, resting her chin on her hands and asking me further. "Oh, in what way?"

"He's horrible," I said with strong tones of dislike in my voice. "He's pushy, he's inconsiderate, he calls me these sexist cute names and then act's like he's God's gift to the female race."

"Sounds like a lot of other fourteen year old boys."

"Don't tell me they're all like that?" I asked as I grazed on my salad. It was an honest question.

"Mostly," she said casually. "The ones that aren't are usually too wimpy to put up much of a fight." I sighed in frustration. "Why couldn't I at least get a more decent boy to work with, or even another girl," I pouted. "So much for Prince Charming showing up."

"To be fair when Prince Charming was fourteen he was probably pretty crass, too," I had to laugh at that.

"Don't worry too much about him," she said to me, trying to be encouraging. "Boys put up that kind of front all the time. It's usually so you won't figure out how weak they really are and if they get hurt badly enough they'll go cry for their mommies." I laughed again, thankful that at least someone could put this in perspective.

After lunch I headed for gymnastics. Because EVA was now becoming more and more a part of my life, all of the regular instruction I had since I was six was now being cut back further and further as my need for training with the Evangelion increased. Swimming and tennis were already down to one day a week, Karate was twice a week. Gymnastics was also now only twice a week and I was afraid that even this might be cut further.

My biggest frustration besides being paired with a dipwad for a piloting partner was that now after seven years of doing gymnastics I had yet to enter any single competition. Every year the pleading to my dad would begin with "Dad, please let me compete this year," and every year the answer was some combination of "we'll see," and was always foiled due to the need for my security. I had already lost two coaches since I was ten because of it and my current coach, Mrs. Kutsenova, was just as frustrated at Dad as I was. With EVA now encroaching on the rest of my daily life, I somehow knew that if I was ever going to complete it needed to be soon, as even with my skills there was no way I was ever going to do well in any competition if I only did Gymnastics less than four hours a week. Mrs. Kutensova knew this too and so we worked out a new strategy to get Dad to change his mind: get me the highest score on an event possible. If I could get a perfect 10 or something maybe just shy of it, I might finally convince him to let me go to a meet.

I focused then on balance beam, which was by far my best event, and together my coach and I worked out a routine that if fully successful would wow at any competition. As part of that I would spend the next two hours honing in my routine as much as possible.

That afternoon I did my regular warmup routine and ran a few laps around the gym before I started on my beam routine. This was normal, and like normal the gym was mostly empty except for me, my coach, and her assistant. Occasionally people on the base would stop by and watch, but during the mid- afternoon most were just too busy working to play spectator, especially now that all of Second Branch's focus was on final assembly of the two EVA units we had now.

On this particular day the leotard I wore was my tiger-striped one which was my current favorite and one I wore for good luck that day. Previously I had a collection of something around a hundred leos, then my body went and grew up on me and I had to start a new collection now with roomer space and bras for my "womanhoods." I remember during puberty praying to God not to let me grow up too much and I meant that physically, and at least someone heard me as by age thirteen and three quarters I managed to top out at a nice little five feet zero with tiny feet and hands, and thankfully a slim build at something like ninety pounds. As I nearly always did since I was little I kept my hair cut short in the back, and with bangs in the front, occasionally like today wearing a headband just to keep the sweat out of my eyes.

As I approached the beam I took chalk out of a bin and applied it to my feet, needed to keep the sweat from making my feet too slippery. Unlike many gymnasts I didn't wear beam shoes or anything else on my feet except the occasional ace bandage if my heels got too loose. I closed my eyes and concentrated hard on the routine, mentally going through everything in my head I'd be doing. Breathing hard, I slowly opened my eyes and counted down to when I'd start. 3…2..1…

Go! I ran down the mat at top speed, getting to just within five feet of the end of the runway and then diving towards the floor hands first. Hitting the mounting spring with my hands, I flipped myself over 360 degrees and landed at the end of the beam on my feet, straightening out quickly. Keeping my hands at my sides I took a few steps down the beam and then spread out my arms, and bent lower to go into an arabesque, quietly raising my right leg above me while keeping everything else leaning forward. Slowly I got my leg into a complete 180 and perpendicular to the rest of my body, and then held it for a few seconds, careful to look forward and give my best smile despite the strain of doing this.

I then snapped out of the arabesque and did a forward flip on the beam. That was impressive but not the best part, that came when I dropped down and straddled the beam and then rolled over so that my hands were on the beam while I now slowly rolled myself forward while pushing with my hands, raising my whole body off the beam itself. While lifting up with my hands I pulled my legs into the splits, again being careful to keep them straight and perpendicular to the beam. It was murder doing that, as imagine holding up your entire body weight for thirty seconds while spreading your legs completely out. But I got it done and then rolled back onto the beam and back on my feet.

Just as I positioned to get my dismount set up I unfortunately had a wobble, not big enough to throw me off but big enough to deduct a bunch of points off. I didn't need the coach's yelling at me about it, I already knew it was a big screw up, but like a trooper I just shook it off and then went into my flying dismount: a backwards double-flip that flung me off the beam and back onto the mat. I just wobbled a bit more on the landing and I was down.

To an outsider that all would have looked impressive, but both the coach and I knew it was bad enough to knock me down a lot. She came over to me and both of us reviewed what happened and how I could straighten up a bit more after coming off the handstand with splits. Determined to make this work, I walked to the beginning of the runway to try again.

As before I lined up at the start and closed my eyes, concentrating on the run. This time I didn't do a countdown, but as soon as I felt ready I just started sprinting for the beam.

In I flash I started with my flying handstand and then landed right on the near corner, perfect positioning! I stiffened up, keeping my back straight and poise as perfect as I could, then went into the arabesque like a dancer. That felt good, then I rolled onto the beam and went to the handstand. Concentrating as hard as I could, I pushed myself up and split my legs, and after holding it for as long as I could, I rolled out of it and back on the beam. This time there were no wobbles and I felt elated.

I was just about to start on the back spring until I heard this loud clapping and cheering from the bench that was closest to the mat, loud enough to snap me out of the perfect zone I was in. I turned around to see the source of the disruption and groaned loud enough to hear me on the other side of the gym: It was Vance Vinson. Wearing a black and red track suit, Vance was clapping loudly with his teeth in a grin a mile wide. I wanted to murder him at that moment.

"Wow, sis, you're incredible," he told me as he got up off the bench and walked towards me. My coach started to try to talk to him in order to warn him away then took a second look at the two large men also now inside of the gym in dark suits: they were VIP security and likely under the command of Vance's father Admiral Vinson. She decided not to get involved as the son of the head of base security approached me where I remained standing on the beam.

"I had no idea you were that good," he exclaimed, still clapping. Not that I mind praise but blowing my routine right in the middle was unforgiveable. Despite my anger I tried my best to hold it back. "Would you mind?!" I scowled. "It's bad enough you have to tease me in the units, do you have to do it here too?"

"Jeez, what is your problem, tiger?" he replied to me. "I'm just complimenting you on your super-perfect performance."

"I hadn't finished yet, you dipshit," I shot back, still very angry that my routine had been fouled by something or someone so stupid.

"You know," he said with a grin, "if you really want to win a gold medal you need to be able to do all that even with idiots like me making all this noise. Actual Competitions are too lively compared to this place, this," he motioned to the rest of the gym, "this is like practicing in a graveyard."

"How the hell would you know," I asked him. "I thought this was too girly for you."

"Hey," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "if there's an event with lots of girls wearing nothing but those kind of slinky outfits, I'm there!"

I'm normally not that body conscious. I mean, I've been doing gymnastics for a long time and if you're worried about been seen in a leotard you're not going to be able to do anything meaningful. But suddenly I had really wished I had put on a pair of shorts that day, and found myself blushing as Vance got a much better look at my body then I ever wished he could. It actually made me nervous to see him stand up right next to the beam with that stupid grin of his. So nervous that I wobbled and suddenly realized that I had not put on any more chalk on my feet since my first attempt at my routine. I then did something I almost never do: I slipped off the beam.

I let out a scream as I found myself careening off the side. It's not a huge drop downward, but you could break something when you land even on a gym mat and I was fearful of hurting myself. But I never made it down. I was caught mid-way through my dive. My eyes opened and I suddenly found myself face up in Vance's arms.

It was certainly a vulnerable position I was in and his grip on me was very strong, he held me so tightly that I couldn't budge at first. I was going to yell at him to let go but then I looked at his face. He silently looked down on me, not with a toothy grin or a smirking expression, but I saw something else instead. His brown eyes were somehow warmer, his face softer, and his smile was more gentle. It was a side of him I hadn't seen up until now.

For a few seconds he just held me like that in his arms and I couldn't get any words out at all. My face blushed even brighter red. Finally getting a rational thought out of my head, I asked him. "Would you let me go please?"

He looked at me curiously and I could see how his eyes scanned my whole body. Reflexively my own hands went to between my legs, not wanting him to see so much of me at such a close distance. Finally I snapped out of it. "Vance! Would you mind please?" I said to him, trying as hard as I could to restrain my anger.

"Sure," he said quietly and gently let me down on the mat. I actually was pretty surprised: I'd thought he'd just drop me right then and there. I stood up and pretended to dust myself off, avoiding eye contact with him. He didn't say anything however and just looked at me. Not knowing what else do to or say, and feeling my concentration completely ruined with him in the room I just turned my back to him and walked off towards the other edge of the mat and where my handbag was sitting on a bench. Without looking back at him I opened up my bag and grabbed my skirt, then after I put it on and my shoes I walked straight out the doors. It was the first time in my life I'd ever left the gym without finishing a routine.

* * *

After a couple of days the EVAs themselves were ready for another test run and late in the evening I was back in the remote underground range. After again syncing with and activating my unit, both us and Unit 03 were to practice maneuvers inside of the spacious subterranean arena so that we could learn how to move the EVAs and start transitioning away from the simulators.

Even after just a few minutes controlling my Evangelion I could really tell how well she was matched up with me. In the first run we just got to walking, but this time I pushed the limits of what she could do, starting with running and jumping and more simple things. Each time she moved with my own commands and it was nearly instantaneous, piloting the EVA was like wearing a suit practically.

Satisfied that my unit would move when and where I told it with my thoughts, I then tried some more advanced things. Could EVA do a cartwheel? Shockingly she did, completely without a hitch. Flips? She could do that too, and within another few minutes of some trial and error I had Unit 04 doing forward flips like an elite gymnast. Here we were, me piloting a twelve thousand ton robot larger than the old Statue of Liberty and I was getting it to do somersaults like a six year old girl. I became a lot more comfortable piloting EVA after that, as I could see how well my own commands fluidly translated into her movements and actions.

I also began to understand just why dad had put so much investment into my training and schooling. I had always wondered why go to so much expense to train me for gymnastics, hiring the best coaches from the other side of the world and even building a gym just for me, yet not allow me to complete in meets. If my sync rate was high enough, my gymnastics skills could match up with the EVA nearly seamlessly, giving us a big advantage in using these things against enemies. I was being trained to pilot all of these years, I just didn't know it. It gave me just that much more faith in my father to know what the end result of his investment in me was.

Vance was also there, training with EVA-03 and putting it through its paces. Vance so far was able to keep up with me and while he didn't have his unit doing flips he was able to wrestle and maneuver well and was already working out how to come up with "killer moves" against enemies. He didn't bother me much that day, at least not yet.

After two hours of moving around the arena and pushing the EVA and myself to our physical limits we were called back into the cages. I exited my entry plug, elated that I had found something I could uniquely call mine. I walked on the steel gantry towards the pilot lockers when Vance intercepted me on the walkway. I was sort of hopeful I'd see the new Vance today, but unfortunately the old one was back in charge.

"Hey tiger," he said with a grin. "Did you win a gold medal tonight?" Disappointed, I tried to ignore him as I walked down the gantry. "None of your business," I said back to him.

"You know, none of that sissy flipping around is going to kill anything, right?"

"You wouldn't know anything," I replied with a smug face. "I bet I can completely kick your ass in this thing if I wanted to."

"No you can't"

"Wanna bet?" I asked him, turning around and stepping close to him. I foisted my finger on his chest as I made my challenge. "I saw you moving around the training arena and you aren't nearly as good as I am. I bet you can't survive five minutes with me in the area."

"I only need ten seconds to kill you," he coldly replied, something of which I was highly skeptical. "Really?"

He moved closer to me, and it was as we stood close to each other when I realized he was at least a foot taller than I was. "Tell you what, Tiger. You want me to stop teasing you like the little girl that you are?"

"I'm not little."

"Sure you're not, said the midget pixie gymnast." I hit him again after that in the arm. Seeing him back off a little I hit him one more time, as hard as I could. He grabbed my wrist and held me as he spoke. "Listen up, tiger, if you can best me with the EVA I'll give up the verbal abuse."

"Did you want to do combat?" I proposed.

"Nah. What's your highest sync rate?"

"I got 39% today," I told him. He smiled at me. "Mine was 41%, but I'll make this easy for you. Out-sync me and we'll call it even."

"Outsync you?"

"Yeah, and by a lot too. Not like zero-point-one or something. This isn't a gymnastics meet where you get a grade for everything you do. You need to kill me, not just beat me. Deal?"

I looked up at him and narrowed my glance, finally wrestling my wrist away from his grip. "Deal."

* * *

The next evening I got my chance to deal with my Vance problem, as I had started to call it. We weren't maneuvering in the EVA like the previous evening but instead running a harmonics test, which is where the Evangelion pilots are fully tested on their ability to sync with their EVAs but without an actual EVA activation. This was the perfect venue for me to hopefully prove myself the better of the two of us.

We boarded the test plugs in the exact same way we'd do a regular entry plug, wearing plug suits and A10 nerve controllers as well. I sat in the plug as both mine and Vance's were then lowered into a giant pool of LCL about half-way deep, then the monitoring test began. My father himself was in the control booth just outside the testing pool.

"Okay, Erin," he coached me, "just let yourself relax and feel out the sync." I tried to do so, not entirely sure what else I could do further to raise my sync rate. I started to run through all sorts of thoughts in my head, thinking about EVA, thinking about stuff I liked, thinking about anything good like pretty flowers or the sunset or a good romance book. Sometimes thoughts of Vance would pop in my head, especially about the earlier time he caught me falling off the balance beam. I pushed that aside, not wanting anything unpleasant.

Someone else got into me, and I began to recall that dream I had when I first synced, the one with the boy's face. I still wasn't really sure what that was, but I sort of focused on it in my mind. Eyes just like mine, I thought. Maybe I really just wanted out of here and to go somewhere far away, where there was cool mountain weather. It actually felt kind of relaxing to think about it, and was certainly better than thinking about my current home of hot, dry desert held back by a city full of air conditioning: the home I could never seem to leave.

I let my mind go and thought about that cabin in my dreams and whoever it was I was seeing inside of it, and nearly fell asleep in the entry plug. Then there was some other sensation, something I couldn't quite grasp. Like a shadow that I just felt, that I wasn't alone in the entry plug. I shook myself awake and looked up at the display screen of my test plug. It said HARMONICS TEST COMPLETE. I breathed a deep sigh of relief and waited for the result.

The voices of the staff inside the control room were heard over the speaker in my entry plug. "Doctor Forrestal, we've got the sync results."

"Do tell," my father sternly commanded.

"For Pilot Vinson the rate is 35.75%. It's slightly below his performance average so far." I quietly smiled to myself, as 35% was lower than his claimed personal best.

"I see," replied my father. "Make sure he's at the right level of neural additive." I bit my lip and waited for my result to be reported.

"And for Pilot Forrestal…." There was a pause and then "55.98%! Her best score so far, sir!"

"Yes!" I said out loud.

"Very good, dear. I think that calls for something special tonight."

"Can we go to R&R?" I asked my father.

"I think I can manage to wake up someone to serve us. Go on and get changed and we'll see what we can do."

"Thanks, Dad!"

Once the test plug was raised out of the LCL and back onto the launch platform I rushed out of the hatch and bolted straight for Unit 03's test plug. I wasn't going to lose a second in rubbing this into the stupid boy. Vance just stood in front of his test plug hatch door, watching me as I marched towards him. As I rushed forward I called out to Vance, taunting him with my success in smacking his sync rate. "I got you! I got you good, you asshole! I…"

As I approached to just a few feet in front of him Vance didn't say anything at first, but instead reached out from behind him and thrusted something in front of my face. I was startled and couldn't finish what I was saying. Right in front of me Vance was now presenting me with a very unexpected response to my victory over him: a bouquet of a dozen red roses.

I was speechless as I saw the flowers, my mouth gaping wide open. With that still look on his face, the same expression he wore as he held me in his arms in the gym, he spoke to me softly. "Congratulations, Tiger."

"Um…I…" I was dumbfounded as I reached out and took the bouquet, gently touching the flowers to examine them. They were real, soft and full-bodied, and knowing that roses just don't grow in the desert or in many other places I knew it wasn't easy for him to just come by them either.

I admit it, I'm a sucker for flowers. I'm not entirely sure how he knew that either, but it was gracious of him just the same. For the first time since I met him, my own defenses went down a notch. "Thank you," I told him.

"You deserve it," he said softly. I tried to think of what else to say, but my face became warm and I'm pretty sure I was blushing nearly as bright red as the roses. Before I could get anything else out of my mouth I heard my dad calling me from behind. "Let's go, Erin."

"Be right there," I shouted over my shoulder. Vance just continued to look at me silently with that still expression on his face. This wasn't at all what I had either expected for hoped for, and now I wasn't quite sure what was really going on between me and him. "Um, I, uh…I gotta go get dinner."

"You go then," he said to me in a soft voice. "I'll catch you tomorrow."

"Yeah…tomorrow." I started to turn around to head towards where my dad was standing, and then said to Vance over my shoulder. "I'll see you tomorrow. Thanks again."

"Don't mention it."

I ran over to where my dad was, anxious to get away from the now very uncomfortable feelings I was having. "I'm here." My dad looked at me and then curiously at the bouquet I was still holding. "A present?" he enquired.

"Victory prize," I told him. He satisfied himself with a smug look on his face. "Good." We then walked together out of the testing pool room.

* * *

As the days went on our training with the Evangelions moved into more complex and challenging exercises. Where before we were getting the basics down of commanding the units, now we were up to fighting simulated targets in our EVAs.

Like the old simulator, most of the missions we did consisted of either offense or defense, but it was always EVA on EVA battles, as Vance and I would use our EVAs to defeat targets that resembled other Evangelions like ours. Usually the targets were holographic projections in the battle arena, but there were automated robot-like targets too and those shot back. Within those days we learned to get really good about maneuvering for combat, using our AT Fields and tactics to avoid being hit while trying to destroy an enemy that was moving as fast as we were. As Vance was good at his word and mostly avoided his earlier teasing, we started to work together better and that was great because it often took both of us working together to succeed in any of these battles.

On one particular night we were in our actual EVAs again in the underground training arena. My unit was armed with a Pallet Gun, basically a giant assault rifle that fired artillery shells like they were bullets, while Vance's Unit 03 was armed with a submachine pistol and a series of Progressive Knives

We worked out a tactic between the two of us, and that was I'd fire on any targets from a decent distance while Vance would try to come up on them in close range. As my EVA was quicker than his, I could dodge and avoid being hit better, while he would work on better ways to sneak up on targets and then jump them while they were trying to knock me out. It usually worked as we did the combat training that night Vance and I took on about four different holographic EVA units. After we got through defeating one spread of targets I saw another three, these were helicopter drones with cannons attached to them, start shooting at us. While I took down two of them with gunfire, he crouched and sprang up and sliced one completely in half, then drew his auto-pistol and blasted another one dead. We were in the last few evenings getting pretty good at knocking down the drones, enough where I wondered just how expensive these things were as we had killed bunches of them.

"Targets clear!" Vance shouted out. "Targets Clear!" said I as I scanned the horizon of the training area looking for anything else.

"All threats are cleared out," Vance reported. But that wasn't entirely true. On the display of my entry plug there flashed a warning: SYSTEM INTRUDED. Unit 03 also received the same kind of attack.

"Somethings trying to hack into the EVA's controls," Vance shouted. He was good at dealing with physical threats like other EVAs and robots. Invisible enemies like computer viruses, not so much.

Fortunately over the last few years I had become a good student of my father's computer techniques. I had come to discover that Dad was in fact one of the world's best computer crackers, something that those who don't understand the term refer to as "hackers." He was actually very, very skilled in gaining entry to nearly any kind of computer system imaginable and had been since he was my age. He had managed to also, through computer lessons that he himself wrote, help me to learn both about how to keep a computer from getting intruded in on by unwelcome threats like viruses and enemy crackers, as well as how to do it myself. When I saw that warning flash on the display of my entry plug, I was prepared.

"I got this," I told Vance on the audio feed as I motioned for the EVA plug control to give me a keyboard. In an instant a glowing red holographic keyboard was projected right in front of my throne and I promptly started keying in commands to call in defensive programs that would stop the digital intruder. My fingers flew on the keyboard, issuing command after command, and using programs already embedded in Unit 04's control system software.

"I'm slowing it down," I reported over the audio feed as I worked to contain the threat. It behaved like an active virus and seemed very intelligent, almost like a rogue AI. Even so I knew how to deal with it.

"Um, a little help here," Vance called out on the audio feed. "This thing is locking up the whole display."

"Just wait a minute," I replied back to him, trying to work hard enough to throw the virus back and then link to his EVA where I'd log in and drive out the virus attacking his EVA too.

After a series of counterattacks and a refresh of the security on the EVA's OS I managed to drive out the killer virus. Then I quickly walked over Unit 04 to where Vance's Unit 03 was standing motionless as the enemy virus chewed through his system. I moved the EVA closed enough to be able to shoot out a cable between us and then that allowed me a hard channel right into his EVA's OS, and then I went to work. Using a combination of pre-set programs installed on my own unit's software bank (of which we had hundreds of terabytes of storage space) plus skills I got from years of being schooled by Dad on how to deal with these things, I had EVA-03's OS cleared of the virus in about a minute.

"Threat's clear," I called out. On my display a video message window came up and Vance's face appeared on the holographic video feed. "Thanks a lot for that!" he told me, genuinely gratified.

"No worries," I said, smiling back at him.

"Anyway, do they really think that Angels got computer viruses? That somehow doesn't make any sense."

My dad's voice interrupted us on the audio feed. "The electronic grid is just like any other battlefield, Mister Vinson. There's no reason why an Angel might not have an ability to attack the EVA digitally."

Vance was still skeptical. "Seriously, sir?"

"I don't doubt it," my father assured him. "Besides, it's also possible your own opponents might not just be Angels." With that Dad left the audio channel to the two of us. I did wonder about that myself however, and what Dad meant. Did that mean we might not just be fighting Angels with EVA but other enemies too?

We ran one more combat simulation that night and I didn't make it back to the apartment until very late, it was after midnight when I finally reached the building. Exhausted, I went straight to my bedroom and took off everything I was wearing. I went to the bathroom and drew up hot water in the bathtub, and then plunged my naked self inside as soon as it was filled up.

One of things I really love when I'm tired is a hot bath and that night was no exception. I laid back in the tub, letting hot water cover me from my shoulders to my toes and just relaxed everything. After a few minutes the stillness of a quiet evening helped me to rest and let go of all of the stresses of the day and then I could finally think.

Things with EVA seemed to be going well, very well in fact. In just a few of weeks we went from barely being able to activate our units to being able to fight with them. I felt supremely confident when I piloted, able to get my unit to do pretty much anything I wanted her to. I had started to call Unit 04 "her" and I wasn't exactly sure why, but it just seemed appropriate. She seemed feminine, and maybe that was because Unit 04 didn't look just like a giant robot from cartoons and instead was thin and lanky, and moved really smoothly. Inside of the entry plug she had a sort of weird, "womanly" smell too although I really can't explain it further than that.

Also, my Vance problem had basically vanished after the harmonics test. Once all of the stupid playground behavior stopped I actually found out Vance was a pretty good fighter, really good in fact. While I could move fast and maneuver the EVA where she needed to be, Vance was very skilled at knocking out enemies and doing it quickly and violently. We worked really well as a team once we managed to stop fighting with each other. He was nice too, most of the time. There was still some teasing that he couldn't help but needle me with, and he still called me "Tiger" all of the time, but suddenly I didn't mind so much. He wasn't all that bad looking either.

The hot water was therapeutic and after a little while I found that every part of my body finally let go and went limp in the warmth. I leaned over the edge of bathtub and let my head rest on the edge, and I found myself slowly drifting to sleep.

My mind turned to the dream I kept having, the one that kept appearing ever since I started with EVA, the dream about the cabin in the mountains. The dreams all seemed like some version of the same thing, daytime or nighttime I imagined living in a cabin on a mountain at the edge of the woods. There was an older man living with this boy who I couldn't quite see in detail, and he did just really mundane things like household chores, or chop wood in the back yard, or at night read by the fireplace or did puzzle-like things on tables (and he seemed to really like puzzles). I thought I heard voices but again it was all muffled, all I knew is that there were two of them and every day seemed much like another. I had thought the whole thing strange but then again it felt like such a nice, peaceful life. If I ever managed to grow up and leave Second Branch that seemed like a wonderful way to live and not in a hot desert where I was now.

Suddenly I felt a rush of water and I drew a deep breath in panic. Forcing my head out of the bathwater I realized that I nearly drowned inside, that's how relaxed I had become from the dream. I took a few deep breaths to get myself back to normal and made a mental note to try and not fall asleep again in the tub, as there wasn't anyone else here to pull me out. Still despite nearly drowning myself my fantasy about the cabin was my escape from reality, and I began to wonder often about my boy in the mountains.

* * *

 _Before I wrote Blue Rose I had plotted out a story that took place at the NERV-2 base in Nevada, entitled "Second Branch." This was basically a side-story that took place in parallel with the first few episodes of the original EVA TV series. I ended up not using it, mostly as it didn't have nearly as much action as I wanted to given that all of the Angels were heading to Tokyo-3 and not Nevada. However two of the pilot characters in that story later developed into Erin Forrestal and Vance Vinson. Much of what you're reading here originally came from that pilot story that was sketched out something like ten years ago._


	5. The House By the Lake

We spent the next full week in training for the Evangelion, running simulations in the afternoons and then actual EVA operations in the evenings. All of my regular classes were cancelled, but I was so busy with everything we were doing that I had little  
time to think about what was happening outside of EVA.

In that same amount of time Vance and I did nearly everything together, not just the EVA stuff but we had lunch and dinner together and when we had any wait time between things we'd talk to each other about anything. He told me about this home in Maine  
and about how much he loved to hunt and go boating, and it sounded not too different from those weird dreams I'd get late at night. I told him about the dreams too and he thought it was funny I'd have them, wondering if I wasn't reading too many of  
those teen romance paperback novels I'd now gotten addicted to. We talked about just little things, I'd share not only my now disappearing hopes of medaling in gymnastics but also all of my everyday live growing up at Second Branch. He seems to understand  
a little bit, as he was an only child and knew about how lonely that could be.

On one Thursday morning I woke up in the townhouse and shuffled over to the kitchen. Being as we were often going on late at night with EVA stuff, I usually didn't actually get to sleep now until after one or even two in the morning, so getting up before  
ten was unusual. I heard some strange noises from the other side of our place and that got my curiosity, so still in my nightgown I walked in to the dining room and saw Dad standing at the table, with my breakfast of fruit and oatmeal already laid  
out.

"G'morning, Dad," I said to him, plunking down at the table.

"Good morning, dear," he replied in an unusually cheerful voice. "I have a surprise for you." I looked up and saw what Dad had brought into the apartment: it was a fairly good size soft suitcase, colored in pink and green.

"What's that for?"

"That," he said as he pointed to the suitcase, "is for you." My spoon full of oatmeal immediately dropped back into the bowl with a splat.

"For me?!"

"Yes," dad said with a smile. "I'll need to do some travelling this weekend, and you will too."

My mouth gaped as wide as a crater. "Where?! Am I going with you this time?"

"No, I'm afraid. I'll be needing to go to the capital again, but we're taking a break with the Evangelion unit as the engineers fit in some additional components. That will take a few days, but the Vinsons have been kind enough to extend an invitation  
to visit them at their home."

"Where? In Maine?"

"Yes. I understand it's quite pretty where they live. You'll be there for the whole weekend."

I was ecstatically happy, as for the first time in my entire life I was going to leave the local area. I was so happy that I practically leapt out of my seat and ran dad over. As usual dad wasn't really great with affection but he didn't push me away  
either as I hugged him tight. "When am I going?"

"It's a midnight flight, so I'd suggest you pack by this afternoon."

"I'm going to do it right now!" I let go of dad, grabbed the suitcase, and then rushed back to my bedroom to start getting ready, just leaving my unfinished breakfast on the kitchen table.

* * *

That weekend was to see a lot of "firsts" for me, one of which was it that it was my first time in a cross-country plane trip. I had been flying before, as sometimes my dad had me with him in a helicopter they used at Second Branch, but we never went  
anywhere far.

The plane that took us from Second Branch to First Branch was a UN air transport, a big cargo jet with four engines that normally hauled supplies and equipment between different bases all over the world. There was a small cabin in front for passengers  
however, and myself along with Vance and his father, got comfortable seats for the five-hour flight to Massachusetts. As this was my first real vacation, I brought lots of comfortable clothes with me and wore a designer green and white striped shirt  
dress with white strappy sandals, something that was just a touch nice while being comfortable to wear for the trip.

It was very early in the morning when we left, and try as I might I couldn't sleep much the day before I was so excited to be going. Flying in the air transport was pretty interesting, and after the thrill of taking off for the first time it was cool  
to finally look down on the rest of the world that I had wanted to see for so long. Despite the fact that it was still dark over most of the country as we flew over, I saw so many things down below in the moonlight, as the views from the aircraft  
were beautiful. Vance and his father sat in the next row, the admiral wearing not a uniform but just a red flannel shirt and blue jeans while Vance wore a blue track suit. The two of them spent the flight just having a conversation about ordinary  
things, while a uniformed steward was nice enough to provide me with a never-ending supply of snacks and drinks for the flight.

We arrived at the airfield at NERV's First Branch about late morning, which gave me just a brief look at the "other" NERV facility in America I had heard so much about. As we exited the aircraft, Vance told me about the base which was where he and his  
father had been just before coming to Nevada, he explained it mostly as a bunch of laboratories with one real large building for the construction of his Unit 03, but nowhere like a spacious training ground to really operate the EVA like we have at  
Second Branch.

As we got into Admiral Vinson's SUV, which was parked and waiting for us on the edge of the airfield when we arrived, both Vance and his father cautioned me about one thing in particular to be careful to avoid while visiting their home: Vance's mother  
didn't know that he was piloting EVA, and in fact didn't know anything about EVA at all. They wanted to be sure I kept the secret, and I nodded and agreed to be careful, not entirely sure what else I should expect from visiting their home.

The drive from First Branch to their home in Maine took about two hours as I sat in the back of their SUV and looked at the scenery from the windows. So many trees! Maine was much cooler than Nevada was and so much more lush, there were plants and greenery  
everywhere. During the drive the Admiral said that where we were travelling used to be even more pretty before Second Impact happened and wrecked the climate, but I couldn't' imagine how it could.

The car trip took a little over two hours and after driving through some windy little roads throughout the countryside we finally arrived at a clearing in the woods. Vance's father parked his SUV next to a black sedan and I got my first good look at the  
Vinson's house. It looked large but not mansion-sized, a two-story wood Cape Cod style with windows everywhere. While the house was pretty from the outside, what was even more impressive was where it was located, as the Vinson's house sat on the edge  
of a large lake. There was a small boat dock on the side where two boats, including a speedboat, were anchored and waiting on the water.

"Wow, this is so pretty," I told Vance as we got our luggage out of the back of the SUV.

"You should see the inside," he replied.

The three of us proceeded to go inside, the admiral opening the door and walking in first. "Maria?" he called out, "we're here!"

From out of a hallway inside came a middle-aged woman that was about as petite as I was, with black hair down to her shoulders, and dressed in a blue and white casual boating-type outfit. She held a computer tablet in her hands. The admiral gently kiss  
her on the cheek and then Vance went to greet her, getting a big hug from her, not easy as her son was over a foot taller than she was.

"It's so good to see you!" she told Vance. I noticed then that Maria spoke English with a slight accent, which I thought might be Spanish but then I wasn't sure. He just looked back towards me and did the introductions. "Mom, meet our new houseguest."

I put down my luggage and offered my hand. "Hi," I said as an introduction, "I'm Erin Forrestal. Nice to meet you." Maria shook my hand while still filming me with the tablet in her left hand, something that looked like she got a lot of practice of already.  
"It's nice to meet you," she replied. "I'm Maria, please make yourself at home."

Now inside the house, I took a look around and saw how real people lived and decorated their houses, and the Vinson's was just so much more warm and colorful that anything I had expected. Just in the living room there were shelves filed with books, model  
boats, and other keepsakes that all had a boating or ship theme, while paintings and pictures of larger ships and boats adorned the wood-panel walls. The carpet was a dark green, and there was a giant leather couch that looked old but comfortable  
right next to it. This looked like a real house for a real family, and not the townhouse filled with computer screens I had grown up in.

"Wow, this is beautiful!" I exclaimed after taking it all in. "I'm so afraid to touch anything!"

Vance's voice came from the hallway, as he was putting luggage away. "Wait 'till you see the lake," he called back. The whole idea of being able to go play on a giant body of water was irresistible to a girl who had grown up in the desert. "Great! Can  
we go on it?"

"Why don't you kids get settled down first," said Marina, "and then Vance can take you out on his boat. Vance?" she called to him.

"Yes, mom?"

"Put her things in the guest room and then you can go boating this afternoon. I've got lunch all ready for everyone." After some arrangements, including having Vance show me to a guest bedroom his mother had already prepared for me on the second floor,  
the four of us were treated to a lunch of hotdogs and fries in the dining room, which was just as cozy and lavishly decorated as the living room was.

By that afternoon I was ready to unwind even though I was still so very excited to be anywhere else other than Nevada, and going out on the Vinson's lake seemed like the perfect thing to do. I ran up the steps to the guest bedroom and closed the door,  
then opened up my suitcase and went through my things. Wondering if maybe I could not only just ride in a boat but also swim I decided today would be the day to be a little daring and promptly found my bikini.

Five minutes later I was back down the stairs, wearing my green-colored bikini along with some blue denim cutoffs and some Converse flat-soled shoes that I thought should be good for a boat. I promptly went out the back door of the house and onto the  
dock and there was Vance, already behind the controls of his candy-red speed boat.

I got on board along with Vance's mom and then nearly as soon as I got seated in back Vance gunned the engine and went straight forward and off the dock. I felt myself pushed right back into the seat cushions and while Maria wasn't really thrilled about  
her son's need for boating speed I was thrilled.

For the next few minutes Vance pushed the limits of his speedboat, racing down the side of the lake and then across, making tight turns at high speed that would throw up waves of water. I thought it was great fun, waving my arms in the air and enjoying  
the rush of the speed as Maria took her tablet, thankfully now in a water-resistant outer case, and took video of me as I enjoyed my first boat ride.

"So are you having fun?" she asked as she kept filming.

"Oh, yeah! That was great!"

"Have you ever been in a boat before?"

"No! This is the first time!" I replied, shaking my hair in the wind as Vance kept the boat in a sprint. "We live in a desert so I've never gotten to do this before."

Vance ran the speedboat for another minute until he decided to stop along the shoreline. He cut the engine and then got out of the seat, he was now wearing a t-shirt and swim trunks and waterproof plastic dock shoes. Vance walked over to see how I was  
doing, and I got up from the back seat of the boat.

"Was that cool?" he asked me. My face was all smiles. "Yeah!"

"Do you want to see more of the lake?"

"Okay!"

"Here you go!"

Before I could do anything else Vance quickly used both of his palms and pushed me over the edge of the boat. Within a second I found myself flying backwards towards the lake water, squealing as I fell. I plunged into the water which felt vigorously cold.  
Fortunately I was a pretty strong swimmer by this point, so once I got over the shock of hitting the lake I immediately recoiled and rushed back up to the surface. On the side of the boat was Vance, looking at me with a grin a mile wide. The teasing,  
bratty Vance had made a surprise return.

Floating right next to the boat and drenched with lake water, I shook my hair like a dog to get out the excess water. Maria chastised Vance for his little prank. "Now Vance, that wasn't nice!"

"But Mom," he said with a telling grin, "She said she wanted to see more of the lake!"

"Not that much more!" I yelled at him from the surface. "Vance, you asshole!"

I managed to get back into the boat and got a towel to dry myself off. Lucky Vance got a bonus for plunging me into the lake, as I dropped my shorts and revealed my bikini bottom to get myself more dry. I didn't care by this point, and while I played  
annoyed with him I had to admit to myself that was pretty funny.

Once back on shore I went back into the house and upstairs to shower and change clothes while Maria started on dinner. After drying off I plopped on a t-shirt, another pair of shorts and then put a white designer sweatshirt over that, and then came back  
down where Vance and the admiral were waiting for me at the dining room table. Maria came out a second later with dinner on a tray she was holding.

By all indications the Vinsons were an incredibly normal family, the kind that would have dinner together and play together and generally got along together. We said grace at the dining table, something we never did at home, and then got to eating whatever  
it was that Maria had baked for us.

"What are these anyway," I asked her with a mouth full of something that tasted like a meat dumpling made with bread.

"They're _Empanadas_ , dear."

"Well they're delicious!" I went through another one until I was completely full and satisfied.

Not long after we finished eating the family got to asking questions about their new houseguest, Maria again holding up the computer tablet to film me as Vance's parents both asked me thinks. Vance sat right next to me at the table, and watched intently  
as I sat there and answered everything.

"Erin, is this your first trip to New England?"

I smiled wider as I spoke. "This is my first trip practically anywhere! I pretty much stay in Nevada all of the time."

"Your parents don't take you on any trips? Or vacations?"

"I live with my dad in the Science City that's part of NERV-2. He's really busy with his work so I guess we don't get out much."

"And your mother?" Maria asked. I should have known that might come up. My happy reactions were dialed down a couple of notches.

"Um, my mother died a long time ago." Maria gasped. "Oh, my child! I'm so sorry!"

"It's okay," I said as I tried to be cheerful about it as much as I could. "I was very young when she died. It was some sort of an accident in the laboratory. To be honest I don't remember much about her."

"Well, I'm sorry just the same. It must be difficult living without her."

"We've gotten used to it, I guess," I said with a sheepish expression. Before they could change the subject Vance suddenly held the side of his head and winced in pain. That headache he got occasionally was showing up again. With deep concern his mother  
asked him "Honey, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Mom," he told her. "Just got these weird headaches, that's all."

I slid closer to him, feeling horrible that he'd get one of those headaches again while we were all having such a good time. "Do you want some water?" I asked him. He nodded and then I jumped out of the seat and rushed towards the Vinson's kitchen. Eventually  
I found both a glass and where the drinking water was dispensed from the refrigerator and came back with the glass full. By the time I got back Maria had started to get aspirin, and Vance took the glass and then the aspirin his mom gave him and downed  
it immediately. After a few seconds more he started to feel better and we all went back to what we were doing around the dining table like nothing had happened. The admiral started again with the questions. "Do you like it here, Miss Forrestal?"

"Oh, yeah!" I said, now sitting closer to Vance as I continued with the interview. "I can't believe you've got your own lake!"

"We own the property out back a mile north," the admiral said. "In the fall we go hunting for deer."

"What? You mean you _shoot_ them?"

"What's wrong with that?" Vance interjected.

"Nothing," I said in an annoyed tone, "as long as they can shoot back!" Everyone else laughed at my comeback. Vance's Mother then asked me another question while I stole another last bite of the apple pie that she had brought out as part of desert. "So  
Erin, you go to school with Vance, yes?" My mouth was full so I just nodded yes.

"What do you like to do when you're not studying?"

"Well," I said, "I'm pretty busy with piloting these days." Just as I said it, I nearly chocked on my pie as I just realized we weren't supposed to be talking about piloting at all with Vance's mom. The admiral's face went sheet white, while Vance just  
looked at me with this glance of daggers. I sheepishly smiled at him, not knowing quite else what to do.

"Piloting?" Mrs. Vinson asked. "You mean like airplanes?"

Oh, God I'm saved! "Uh, yes! That's it, that's the ticket! Yes, I'm learning to fly airplanes in my spare time!"

Maria thought my answer was wonderful. "Incredible! You're so capable as such a young age!"

I smiled back at her. "Oh, it's not so difficult. Kinda fun, actually." I smiled back at Vance as both he and his father looked very relieved.

"Is that all you do?"

"I like sports," I said to Maria. "I play tennis and I swim. I do gymnastics too." All and all Mrs. Vinson seemed very impressed. "It sounds like you're a very talented and charming girl," she concluded. "A pity we couldn't meet your father."

"Trust me," said the admiral with a frown on this face, "you _don't_ want to meet her father."

"Oh, he can't be _that_ bad!" Maria protested.

"My dad's nice but," I explained, "sometimes he's a bit of a control freak. Too much time on the computer I think."

"Then it's a good thing he's got you there next to him to keep him grounded. Erin, do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"No, ma'am," I finished. "It's just me."

* * *

I spent the next day being shown around the area, with Vance's mother driving him and I to a little town not far away called Lake Arrowhead while the admiral had to stay behind and take care of business at the house. For most of the morning and early  
afternoon I got the grand tour of small towns with cozy cafes and neat little shops, and nearby forests, lakes and mountains that we could see as we drove through windy little roads through the countryside. Compared to where I came from it was like  
heaven, especially as the weather was cool with a slight breeze, an unusually cool period for the Summer I was told by Maria. It was nice of the weather to cooperate for my visit.

By about mid-afternoon I had done so much riding, eating, walking, shopping, and touring that I was starting to tire out, so they drove me back to the house. Still excited from being able to see what a normal part of the country looked like, I marched  
upstairs back to my guest room to take a break.

The guest bedroom the Vinsons put me was just as pretty and decorated as the rest of the house, and in keeping with Maria's tastes there was a theme just like nearly every other room at her home. The comfy chair was a nice leafy green and the wallpaper  
reflected a garden pattern with vines and flowers, with the bedspread having a matching pattern. There were several shelves in the room with various little knickknacks and little animals or all with gardening and other nature themes. My guest room  
also had an adjoining bathroom with both a small shower and a large bathtub, and it too was decorated in green and white. It was clear that Vance's mom took her housewifing seriously from the delicate and coordinated appearance of my room, and I just  
fell in love with all of it.

Still tired from the day's excursion, I just sat in the comfy chair and looked out towards the lake behind the house. This place was a dream come true, and I wondered if I'd ever get a chance to come back here after all was done with EVA and things. That  
got me to thinking what my life might have been like had my mother not died, and that made me sigh a lot and just start to wonder what else in my life I had missed out on. I mean, I loved my dad, and all of the things I did at Second Branch were like  
an adventure. Certainly who else would ever have a chance to drive giant robots! But just being a normal girl was also something I'd always wanted, and it always seemed just out of reach. No wonder I started having dreams about living up in the mountains  
and away from everything. I had another of those dreams last night, and all of a sudden just realized something about them when Vance walked into the room. He was wearing a black printed t-shirt with some gun manufacturer logos and blue jeans, while  
I still had on my white golf polo and pleated green miniskirt, and wore ankle socks as I sat with my feet behind me on the chair.

I didn't say anything at Vance at first as he came in the guest room but just gave him a small smile and went back to looking wistfully out the window. He noticed my mood however, and quietly sat down on the mattress opposite of me, his hands holding  
a computer tablet.

"What'cha thinking about?"

"Oh, I had that dream again."

"The one with that boy in the mountains?"

"Yeah, only I just realized something," I told him. " I'm the boy."

"That's weird. How did you know?"

"I just knew, that's all."

Vance smirked at me "You didn't just reach down inside your pants and…" Oh, God, please. I took one of the cushions out of the comfy chair and hit him as hard as I could with it. "You are so gross! Of course not!" He laughed as I sat back down in the  
chair.

"Besides" I explained, "I don't really control the dreams, they just sort of come. It's like I can see what he sees."

"And just what does he see?"

"There's this cabin in the woods and someone else is there, some older guy who I can't see clearly. And that's about it really."

He gave me this smirk and looked at me with a narrow glance. "I know what this is really about: You're just lonely for a boy in your life."

What he said hit just a little too close for me and I adjusted myself on the seat, careful to not let Vance get a good view of what was underneath my skirt. "I am not!" I said in a firm, dignified voice as I leaned back in the chair and shook my hair  
into place. "I'm just fine the way I am now."

"Then why do you keep imagining this guy?

"Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?"

"Oh, so you are in love!"

That deserved another strike, and again I jumped up and hit him with the chair cushion. "You stop it! That is none of your business!"

"It's okay," Vance said as he gently wiggled the tablet in his hands, "I've got it all on video."

Oh, shit. Damn he had gone out and got my private thoughts recorded. I suddenly felt vulnerable, more than I'd ever been with him. "You delete that now, Vance Vinson," I commanded.

"Make me," he teased back. Well, this means war.

I grabbed the cushion again and this time didn't let up, as I kept hitting him on the bed enough times for him to drop the tablet to the bed. I didn't care, I was winning this battle as far as I was concerned and kept up my attacks, with him and I both  
giggling as I escalated our pillow fight by jumping on the mattress. I continued my attacks while I knelt on the bedspread, as Vance playfully kept batting away my cushion weapon, then getting his own pillow and fighting back by hitting me with it  
several times.

We played together like we were little children, both of us going at each other with an arsenal of pillow weapons until we both collapsed on the bedspread right next to each other. Then suddenly I noticed that Vance's face was within an inch of my own  
and we both stopped fighting.

We lie there on the bed, our eyes locked on each other for the next minute. Saying nothing, each of us caught our breath from our pillow fight, but I was close enough to him now to feel the warmth of his body. Suddenly I felt a lot weaker, my heart started  
beating fast.

Vance quietly took my hand in his, and for a moment we locked fingers together like lovers. The smile came off of his face, and off of mine. That still look from his dark brown eyes, the ones I remember when he caught me falling off the balance beam,  
they were back, and they were peering right into me.

At that moment I was completely unsure what I should do next. Was I scared? Oh, I was terrified. Here I was with someone I barely knew, thousands of miles from home. But the mood was quiet, the weather nice and cool, the sunlight coming out of the windows.  
It also seemed just so easy, so easy for me just to close my eyes and pretend to be that princess that I wanted to be so much. I took a deep breath and swallowed, and Vance took a firmer grip of my hand. I prepared for what was to come.

Slowly, he approached me, closing the distance between his lips and mine. I closed my eyes and waited, and then suddenly fear gripped me hard. This was way too fast, I thought to myself, I was supposed to hate this boy and now we're coming down to this,  
and on a bed no less. I didn't feel safe.

I jerked and pushed myself away from Vance, and then got up from the bed. "Gotta go pee," I said as an excuse and before he could say anything else I rushed into the guest bathroom and slammed the door. I didn't hear anything from behind but I did actually  
try and go pee, and then afterwards spent the next few minutes looking at myself in the bathroom mirror.

I really didn't want to fall in love with this guy. Vance Vinson was a violent jerk, and had a crass and mean sense of humor. Yet I had never felt warmer than with any other human being than I had with him. I could see myself doing it, I could see myself  
being held in his arms and suddenly that was I all that I wanted. I didn't want to be alone anymore, despite how scared I was. Getting my courage, I turned and opened the guest bathroom door. He was gone from my room, and that gave me a sigh of relief.  
Maybe it wasn't going to happen today I knew, but I also knew it was going to happen soon.

* * *

We spent the rest of the day just hanging together with Vance's mother, as she cooked dinner on an outdoor barbeque that consisted of ribs and roasted chicken, all of which was delicious. The admiral only joined us briefly, as it seemed Vance's father  
was always on the telephone. Like dad I know Admiral Vinson had a serious job but it seems like a bummer to have to spend your whole vacation weekend doing work and not enjoying things. But the rest of us had fun, spending time eating by the lakeside  
and watching the skies at night. Vance and I stayed close but we didn't talk about what almost happened today, and when I went to bed I just told him goodnight and went straight to my room.

Unfortunately my trip to paradise had to come to an end and I slowly made my way downstairs the following morning. Maria was already in the kitchen, having just prepared a breakfast of pancakes and eggs for all us, and again it was amazingly delicious.  
Vance and his father got into another long conversation about things that I could only think were military, they used a lot of terminology between them I didn't understand even after being at NERV for years. Seeing that I was just sitting at the table  
after eating, Maria asked me if I wouldn't mind joining her upstairs.

She led me to the master bedroom, which like all of the rooms in the Vinson house had a theme and again it was nautical in nature, with little ship models and pictures of boats and of the ocean hung all over. I noticed one large painting on one side which  
looked like the Vinsons when they were very young: he was wearing a white navy uniform while she had on a powder-blue dress, and they looked stunningly attractive and very much in love in the painting. I had noticed after the whole weekend trip that  
the Vinsons now seemed like there was some emotional distance between them since the time of the painting, and it made me wonder why it had become that way? Was this how older couples handled things that were difficult, or maybe they were just really  
private. Having never seen my parents together very much, I really didn't know what was normal and what wasn't.

"Here," Maria said to me, "I got you something as a going-away present." She handed me a large box in colorful patters. I gasped in surprise, as I had not really expected anything, and in fact I felt rather guilty for not thinking to give the Vinsons  
any kind of gift in return for their generosity for having me in their home.

"You didn't have to do this!" I protested, not even knowing what was in the box.

"It's quite alright, I saw this while we were out shopping yesterday and it seemed perfect for you." Reluctantly I did open the box and saw that it was a dress, one made of very soft cotton that had thin green and yellow stripes and delicate patterns  
woven into the fabric. From the brand name on the tag I knew it was from a famous maker and was not at all cheap.

"Oh, this is so nice!"

"Please try it on," Maria asked and I did so, quickly finding the master bathroom and taking a few minutes to undress and slip on the new outfit. It was very comfortable, with cap sleeves and a hemline that was about mid-thigh, and the material was very  
light: perfect for wearing out in the desert. I popped back out of the bathroom and showed it to Maria, who was as delighted as I was with the dress.

"You look beautiful, my dear," she told me, gently caressing the side of the dress as she spoke to me. Maria was about my height, so we could see each other eye to eye, and I knew she would have a lot more to say to me.

"I enjoyed having you here this whole weekend, I really did."

"Well, thank you so much! Everything was so wonderful out here!"

"Not bad for your first vacation, isn't it?" I smiled and nodded at her, feeling great that I had made another friend.

"You know, it's difficult living with boys and especially these two. They're always having to prove what men they are. It's very nice having someone else here who can appreciate things from a woman's perspective." I nodded along, knowing exactly what  
she meant from my experience with Vance.

"But," she continued, "I've…I've seen a big change in Vance since he left for Nevada. Somehow he's managed to act a bit more mature in the time that he's been here. I can't help but think you had something to do with that." I didn't really know how to  
respond to that, and felt myself blushing.

"Vance grew up an only child. I always wished that somehow I could have found a way for him to have someone else to grow up around, maybe that could have taken the edge off of him." She looked at me directly, "but you're also an only child, and I think  
you understand that sense of loneliness. You might be able to reach through to him where I couldn't, find a way how to tame him."

She gently reached for my face and caressed it in affection. "You're very special, _senorita_. Beautiful and talented, and very kind. Please take care of my son for me while he's in your _casa_."

Maria Vinson wasn't blind, and even then she could see what was happening between Vance and I. She wanted him to be happy, and she wanted to be sure that I could make him happy. After hearing that from her I somehow felt better inside, and much more confident  
about Vance and about everything between us. I smiled at her and told her "I will!" and then we hugged each other tight.

I went out of the back door and towards the lake to find Vance, and there he was standing at the edge of the water. He was wearing a blue and red flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots while I still had on the dress that Maria gave me along with my white  
sandals. Vance's mouth went into a smile as soon as he saw me.

"You look nice," he told me as I got closer to him. I told him that his mom had bought me the dress and he didn't seem surprised.

"Yeah, I think mom's taking a pretty strong liking to you." We walked together on a pathway around the edge of the lake as we talked, we were so close to each other that we kept bumping into each other as we went along.

"I meant to ask, but I just didn't want to be rude…"

"What is it?"

"Is your mom from Mexico or something? She has an accent and all."

"It's Colombia," Vance clarified for me. "The story is that my grandfather was the chief of the Colombian navy and dad was down there a long time ago to train their marine commandoes. They met each other at some party and I guess it stuck."

"She's amazingly nice," I complemented.

"She is that, basically the perfect mom. A bit protective though."

"Really?"

"Yeah, when I was little she'd always bother me about not doing dangerous stuff, like shooting, or boats, or things like that. But I said "Yes, mom," and then I did it anyway." I couldn't help but giggle at that. "Maybe she really wanted a girl," I replied  
and Vance laughed out loud. "Yeah, that could be true too."

"Have you ever been to Colombia?"

"Never. It's a shithole. After Second Impact the drug lords took over and made the whole country their backyard drug lab, whorehouse, and hunting range all in one. Then the UN military came and fucking killed nearly everyone else left. Dad went back there  
after that to try and get my grandparents out but they were already dead by the time he showed up."

"Wow, that's sad. I guess being isolated it's hard to really think much about how the rest of the world is."

"The rest of the world is a mess. Even out here, maybe where we are might be okay but go into what's just outside of Cambridge and it's a nightmare. Don't even talk about New York, at least the parts that aren't underwater." It was terrible to hear that  
from Vance, but I also realized that he had, up until EVA, lived more of a normal life that I did. He was out in the world, his dad doing dangerous things, while I was raised completely behind the walls of Castle Second Branch. It made me wonder how  
worse the outside world really was.

We walked together for a while alongside of the lake, not really saying anything else but just enjoying the time we had left before we had to go back. It was just so pretty out here, and so peaceful that you could hear the wind blow through the trees.  
I felt comfortable, and I felt good having Vance right there next to me. As we continued we bumped into each other again but this time his finger got a hold of mine as we touched, and I decided not to let go of him. By the time we got half way down  
the length of the lake where there was a little patch of clearing with yellow and white wildflowers, my hand was locked in his.

Vance stopped walking at the clearing and I stopped with him, still holding his hand as we faced each other in the middle of the grass and flowers. I felt the wind gently blowing on my dress and the coolness of the breeze felt good against my skin. I  
loved the way that the grass tickled against my toes. It was perfect where we stood, and he knew it too.

"Erin?" he asked me. I looked up at him, realizing that I was the first time Vance really called me by my name.

"I know I'm not easy to get along with." I smiled at him knowingly. "I think I've gotten used to you by now," I told him.

"Well, I'm not even used to you yet, and I don't think I ever want to get used to you." Him saying that made me smile just a little bit more, and I knew now what I wanted, and what I feared, was actually coming true.

"Do you think it would be okay for us to, you know, be together? I mean, we sort of didn't hit it off at first but I think we work pretty well together, don't you?" I didn't say anything but I nodded at him.

"Anyway, I'd like to…" he paused for a bit, suddenly not his normally confident self, "…I mean, I'd like to, you know, kinda spend more time with you. If that's okay with you."

"We pilot EVA together," I told him. "We're kind of stuck together as it is."

"I know but I don't mean like that, I mean for all of the non-EVA stuff too."

My eyes met his and I could see that look on his face again, the quiet look, the one he gave me when he wanted to be the good Vance. I loved how his eyes were when he did that. I softened my own expression at him, I wanted to let him know it was okay,  
but I was scared too. Vance struggled to get out what he really meant and I waited for it to come.

"I guess I just want you to, um," he paused again and then took a deep breath and blurted it out. "You want to go out with me?"

It was at that point that I melted, expectations griped me so that I couldn't do or say anything else except just quietly nod my head, but our eyes met and I knew what I wanted next. Thankfully he was able to give it nearly immediately.

Vance gently leaned down towards me and I raised myself up on my toes as I closed my eyes. I was never sure how people managed to get their lips on target when they did that, somehow in all of the romance books they never missed each other and ended up  
falling over onto the ground or something. But I guess it works as a half-second later his lips met mine in mid-air.

For such a long moment I felt the sensation over my entire body, I remember how warm it was, I remember how good it felt, and I remember this strange tingling in my toes. I held the kiss for him as long as I could hold my breath, and as I was a pretty  
good swimmer that was a long time. I wanted this moment to never end, I just wanted to die right here and now, that's how powerful it was to me.

Finally we let go and each of us took a deep breath as we opened our eyes, giggling because we had both done the same thing at the same moment. He then took me in his arms and wrapped them tight around me and I again felt wonderful. He was so strong,  
and so warm, and I could only take another deep breath and close my eyes again, and I held him as tightly as I could.

We didn't say anything else, but that embrace lasted for minutes. We then kissed again, shorter but still just as sweet, and I smiled at him. I was happy and so was he: neither of us were alone any longer, we had ourselves and could share this wonderful  
space and time together. He took another deep breath and then said the thing I didn't want to hear. "I guess we need to go back now."

"I don't want to go back," I told him.

"Well, that world won't save itself. Come on Tiger, we'd better go before they drag us back." I nodded again, reluctant to leave the little paradise where we had found each other. I put my hand inside of his and together we walked back to the house.

size="1" noshade=""

 _No need for any comments on this chapter, it pretty much came together as good as it could._ _Hope you enjoyed it._


	6. Dark Side

We held hands the entire flight back to Second Branch and afterwards, right up to the point where my dad's driver picked me up from the airfield with my luggage. My brain had by then gone into complete neutral, but my heart was light and I couldn't sleep that night at all despite how tired I was.

The next ten days were a furious blur of activity, as both of our Evangelions were ready for the next stage. We spent practically the entire stretch of each day in training, in classrooms, or in simulators, or in the units themselves. Dad was busier that either of us, spending nearly all of this time at the lab or at the secret operations area, seeing to various components and adjustments being made to our two giants. I had barely seen him since I returned from Maine, perhaps only during a live EVA activation would he be in the control room and then we'd just catch up for a few minutes when I got out of the entry plug. Afterwards then I'd go back to the penthouse and he'd stay at the cages or in the lab, I didn't seem him back home that I can remember.

We were told that despite the fact we could activate our EVAs they still weren't complete enough to use in battle and it would take a while longer, weeks or more, to get them completely ready. That meant we had to look forward to a life of late night training out of sight for some time to come.

Despite how busy we were, Vance and I still found time to be together, and we were together every single day. On most days he'd greet me in the commissary where he'd give me a hug to start the day, then we'd eat breakfast together at our own table and talk about anything and everything. Now that I had been to his home in Maine he then told me many stories about his adventures on the lake or out in the woods and it all seemed like so much fun. I already wanted desperately to go back.

We were usually in some sort of training most of the day and we'd run though it all together, sometimes we'd take turns in various simulators while the other would wait, and I'd catch up on reading (by this point I was also a devotee of romance novels, and devoured them ravenously) when I wasn't in a training session myself. Then we'd get dinner, again together at our own table, and often we'd chat or relax and play games with each other. I found myself not at all afraid to be affectionate with him, despite his larger size and seemingly tough attitude Vance had a lot of soft spots and I found all of them, including how ticklish he actually was. The others we worked with didn't really say anything to us but didn't dissuade us from public displays of affection either, and he'd make a game of stealing kisses from me while we were in between training sessions or just about to get back into our units while we were on the cages.

The training itself got more complex, our simulated missions were more and more like military drills where we'd actually drop into a target by parachutes and then have to kill everything inside, the target was almost always some type of underground fortress and the defenders other simulated EVA units. The difficulty levels were also higher, it became harder and harder to eliminate our opponents. Still we kept up with it, we were so busy between multiple runs a day and a final night session of an hour with the actual EVAs that there wasn't much time to think about what was coming over the horizon. Maybe I didn't want to think about it, I was happy now with a boyfriend and having something interesting and important to do, the fulfillment of all of the frustrations of my sucky childhood. Maybe it was dangerous but EVA was just as powerful as anything I could think of and I felt confident when I piloted her that nothing could really stop us.

After a week and a half of all of this intensity we were finally given a break, a whole day without any training or other EVA stuff, and Vance asked if wouldn't mind going with him on an actual, real live date. I told him I couldn't wait.

The plan was that we'd spend the afternoon in R&R, and then get dinner and see a movie later that night. It was about that point when I starting thinking to myself "should I tell dad I'm doing this?" I mean, did I need his permission to date a boy? As we had never had the "birds and bees" kind of talk between us I wasn't entirely sure and as paranoid as dad got at times it did finally dawn on me that I probably needed to say something at some time to him about Vance.

Then again I was pretty sure Dad was already in the know about Vance and I. For one thing there wasn't any time when I wasn't out of sight of base security and I knew he could follow me wherever I went. Even when I was out of doors I knew that if I saw a small drone up in the air it was likely focusing at least a camera on me. But I had grown up with the security and it had never impacted anything I did before once I realized it was there.

Also, going to Maine was Dad's idea, and Vance, being an EVA pilot and all, was certainly in on the base's big secret. So there was no way he didn't know, I concluded, and if dad really objected I'm sure something would have come up by now. In the very, very back of my mind I wondered what would happen if I took Vance home to the penthouse one day. But I was enjoying things as they were now and I really didn't want to push it at all, afraid that my fantasy bubble would pop at any moment.

* * *

I woke up and spent a long time that morning getting ready. By this point in my life I had a decent selection of good outfits, most of which I barely or never wore, and so I tried to figure out what would be best. After trying on several ones I fell back on the dress Vance's mom gave me if only because it was so comfortable compared to some of my others. Once that was figured out I did all the other stuff to girl me up, such as paint my nails a bright red, then picked out emerald-green stud earrings and worked for nearly an hour at the mirror on my makeup. This time I went all out: bright red lipstick plus mascara, shadow, and even a bit of rouge which Jo had taught me how to do. I finished off with a white hairband to keep my bangs under control, as I still wore my hair at neck-length but with long bangs in front. Then I put on the highest heels I owned, which were a pair of four-inch high white wedge sandals, and headed for the door.

When I got downstairs and outside our tower there was a camouflage painted base security Hummer, or HMMWV they called it, parked outside. I had expected that maybe Vance asked his dad to provide transportation but was surprised when I saw Vance himself, wearing a black leather jacket, t-shirt and camouflage utility pants with boots, emerge from the driver's seat. "You know how to drive?!" I said I astonishment.

"Yeah," he said with bravado, pretending to polish his chest. "My dad's the base security chief so who's going to stop me anyway?"

I got into the passenger's seat in the front cabin with a bit of help from Vance as it was so high off the ground, if I had known that I'd have to be pushed five feet upwards wearing a mini-dress and heels I might have gone with a different outfit that day, as Vance was pretty pleased with himself after he boosted me up and into the cabin. Once buckled inside Vance took me straight to R&R and he did so practically speeding down the base roads, even taking one of the turns on edge like a racecar. A little scary but also fun, I squealed as he made the turn with a loud screech and burned rubber on the rest of his way to R&R.

Fortunately he wasn't pulled over and we both got out, again I needed help to make it down from the cabin and really had wished that day I had at least worn some bike shorts underneath the dress considering there was a strong breeze that afternoon. No matter, I guess teenage boys probably live for trying to get a glimpse of your panties, and I'm pretty sure Vance got a good view of mine for a least half a second as I climbed out of the cabin of the Hummer.

We walked hand in hand into the arcade portion of R&R and then proceeded to play everything in sight. Since piloting EVA I had gotten pretty decent at shooting games of all kinds, while Vance naturally had the high score on nearly every game in the arcade, with the prominent initials "VV" visible atop the winner's list. That lasted for about an hour when we wondered over to the carnival games on the other side of the arcade.

Given the large number of engineers and techs working at Second Branch, it would make sense that R&R had a huge arcade with all of the latest games for everyone to blow off stress at. They also had several of the old-style carnival games where you'd toss a dart or shoot targets to get a prize. After playing around a little I saw a shooting gallery game where the top prize was a giant stuffed tiger about three feet long. Well, I decided I had to have it and very cutely preened on Vance until he agreed to blow the rest of his arcade money on several rounds of shooting targets. As I said before, Vance is an incredibly good shot and it didn't take long for him to win my prize. Grabbing my new best friend like an oversized teddy bear, we walked out of the arcade but not before stopping by an instant photo booth to commemorate the event. We took several pictures together that day, and I remember gently kissing him on the cheek at the end of the photo shoot, just to show my appreciation.

Try as I might I couldn't get Vance into the Chinese restaurant for our late lunch, and while he was pretty easy with me for everything else, on that issue he stubbornly didn't budge as he hated Chinese food. We settled on Mexican food and sat and talked while the two of us munched on tacos as my new tiger friend watched on.

We caught our movie afterwards. This time he left the choice to me and I picked one of the _Star Wars_ films, which were my favorites growing up. We sat in the small media theatre just the three of us and I held Vance's hand the whole time while I relieved the story where the hero finds out that his dad was an evil monster while his secret twin saves him after their minds somehow link together.

By the time we got out of the theatre the sun was starting to go down, and I asked Vance if we could go see the sunset. He agreed, and we took the Hummer to the southwest edge of the base.

Before we had the penthouse in the tower, and before Second Branch was a big place my family had a small house in the outer part of the base. It was there that I lived when I was very young, when my mother was still alive. Where we went with the Hummer was just around where we lived before, and while the old house wasn't there anymore I still barely remembered the area, as there was a security fence about five hundred yards just in front of us with armed sentries at several places around the base perimeter. We got out of the Hummer, this time I took off my sandals first before I got out which made it a lot easier.

The two of us walked for a bit around the area, as the sun was still slowly descending in the western horizon. "So this is where you lived before?" Vance asked.

"Yup. Right up until I was four."

"Were you _born_ on base?"

"Supposedly my birth certificate says Las Vegas, the city still had people living there back then. But I don't ever remember being anywhere else but here."

We were just chatting as we walked along when I saw something in a small ridge close by. Letting go of Vance I scurried to where the ridge was and then knelt down. In the folds of the dry earth there was a small spot where water, maybe from a natural spring down below, had bubbled up to the surface. And on that spot were flowers, very small yellow and purple wildflowers. I remembered the flowers because they looked just like the ones my mother used to plant in hopes of making a garden bed full of desert bloom.

Being very careful not to harm any of them I knelt closer and got a good look at all of these little flower and flower buds that had somehow survived being in 110-degree heat for most of the summer. There weren't very many of them, and without the underground water there's no way any of them could have been alive at all. It was amazing to see those grow despite all of the dry desert that was around us.

Vance was unimpressed. "They're just flowers."

"Nothing grows here, in case you haven't noticed," I replied. "It's a miracle any of these are here at all."

"So what are you going to do, bring them home?"

"I can't, otherwise they'll die. I can only leave them here and hope for them to keep going."

Besides giving the tiny blooms a chance for live, the open spring also attracted whatever small wildlife was here. While the desert is hot and dry for most of the year, there's a lot more going on in nature that most people just don't notice. But because we lived in a city of ten thousand people who all ate things and then threw out the remainder as trash, all of that leftover food was like a giant magnet to wildlife for miles around. It wasn't unusual to see small mice or other rodents around the base scavenging on our garbage, and that in turn brought in predators such as hawks or snakes. There weren't many larger animals around but if you kept a sharp eye you could spot rabbits or even foxes sneaking around. I know this because when I was younger I used to spy on the base grounds from my townhouse's balcony with a set of binoculars, and I'd see wildlife come around all of the time.

As I looked around not only did I spot a few little rodent-like animals but also saw two jackrabbits in the near distance. I stopped and got a good look at both of them, as it was pretty rare to get so close.

"Vee, look!" I pointed to Vance, speaking in a whisper. "Bunnies."

"Rabbits? Oh, cool!"

For a moment I thought Vance was going to just enjoy the nature sightseeing like I was, but then I realized he had other plans. He rushed to the back of the Hummer and opened up the trunk. Almost a minute later he came around to the ridge, in his right hand was a hunting rifle with scope.

"Vee?! No, please don't!"

He looked at where the two jackrabbits had frozen in place while watching us watch them. "You think that's maybe a hundred or two hundred yards where they're at?"

I gasped in horror when I realized what Vance was going to do with the rifle. "Vance. Vance! Don't do this!" But Vance just ignored me and loaded a cartridge into the chamber. The two rabbits got a sniff of us and decided to run, and I certainly couldn't blame them.

"Vance! Vance! Don't. Don't shoot them!" Vance totally ignored me, and with his rifle scope took a bead on one of the running rabbits. I still couldn't believe he was going to do this while on a date with me. "Vance? VANCE!"

He pulled the trigger once and in the distance there was a flash of smoke followed by a small red splash. Vance quickly pulled out the rifle bolt and ejected the spent cartridge. By this time I was screaming at him to stop.

"Vance, stop it! Stop it! Don't kill them! VANCE!"

I watched helplessly as the second rabbit tried to make it to the perimeter fence. There was a second shot, followed by another small red puff in the distance. Vance ejected the second cartridge, and started walking towards where he had shot the first rabbit.

Angered and terrified, I had broken down into tears after he had so casually killed both of the jackrabbits. I was furious at the boy. Here we were in the most romantic thing we had done since Maine and he decides to kill two helpless animals in the middle of it. Unable to cope with this and feeling increasingly angry at Vance, I turned around and headed for the road back to my townhouse.

It wasn't until he had nearly reached the corpse of the first rabbit when Vance noticed that I was gone. Upon seeing me walk on the road back home, he hurried to catch up. I didn't even look at him, I couldn't and not just because my tears had become so heavy that I had black mascara running down my face.

"Erin, Erin? Wait up!" he said to me as he tried to catch me but I just kept moving. Finally he ran and then kept pace as I marched away from the scene. "Erin, hey, don't tell me you're pissed over this!" I said nothing but just kept moving away from him as fast as I could walk.

"Erin? Come on, it's just for fun!" he tried to grab hold of my arm but I shook it off as hard as I could. Determined not to see his face again, I picked up my pace to a run, and tried to make it to my place before I completely broke down. Vance kept calling out to me but after a while even he stopped and I left him at the side of the black asphalt road. Finally I ditched the sandals and went at a full run all the way back to my apartment tower. My mind was full of white noise, it was like everything around me just went dull and dim and all I could hear was the sound of my own panting.

Eventually I made it to the foyer and went straight to the elevator. Within another two minutes the door to our place opened and I bolted inside, not even bothering to close the front door behind me. I plopped in my bed and buried my face in my pillow, just sobbing as I had felt my heart was ripped out. Was I overreacting? Probably, but at the moment the trauma was just too fresh: someone I had felt real affection for had just slayed two innocent animals right in front of me and I didn't know how to react other than just to run away and feel so sorry that I had let myself get so close to something so terrible. I just didn't care, as it seemed just when I got to reach some pinnacle of happiness the floor always dropped out from underneath me. So again I cried myself to sleep.

* * *

I woke up later the next morning and slowly got myself started up for the day. Still unsettled from yesterday's trauma, I wasn't entirely sure how to go from here. The only thing I did know was that I didn't want to see Vance today and I'd do anything in my power to make sure that happened.

My current training schedule usually called us to start simulations and any classes in the mid-afternoon and then actual work with the EVAs at night. How I had been starting my day since Vance and I were going out was by rushing out of the house by eleven and then finding him to have lunch and hang out before anything started. I decided today I would try to get back to what things were like before he showed up.

In my pre-piloting days I had usually started most mornings with about a half-hour to stretch and work out in my bedroom even before I got out to get breakfast. When I was ten I asked dad if he could have his people install a ballet barre and mirrors on one wall of my bedroom and he thankfully complied, making at least one side of my room into a mini dance studio. Then once I woke up I'd get dressed and then do a series of exercises to get my muscles warmed up. It really helped my flexibility to do that nearly daily, not to mention it was a great way to calm down and sort of think about what the day would be like. When EVA came around however, I ended up waking up much later and drowsier as we were staying up very, very late with training and I got out of the habit of my daily stretching.

One of my little pleasures in life is putting on a brand-new leotard and stretching out in it. It's a rather nice feeling to have that against your skin, and a good leo should keep you warm, absorb sweat and move completely with you without being too tight or having wedgies in the wrong places. I had earlier bought a soft green camisole leotard made in Japan that was fabricated from a new type of nylon material. It wasn't really for gymnastics but from the catalog description it seemed like it would be very comfortable and when I finally tried it on today it was, fitting me nice and snug and feeling like a second skin.

I spent the next half an hour at the barre, doing various poses and stretches which were a combination of things from both ballet and gym. I never had actual ballet schooling, I didn't even own a pair of dance slippers, but my coaches would teach me things that helped my muscles get better toned and gave me better poise, and so I'd quietly go through this repetitive set of exercises that covered everything from turnouts and piles to arabesques.

While worked out at the barre, my mind went to what to do about Vance. I still had felt terrible about the previous day, as at least I has having the time of my life on such a fun date and then he goes and ruins it by killing two rabbits like it was nobody's business. Maybe my earlier suspicions were right about him, that Vance was just a violent thug who could occasionally be charming and warm. I was probably much better off without him.

But there were other things to consider, and one was that he did come from a different world than mine. Here I was, the Princess of Second Branch, who hadn't truly suffered a day in her life while Vance at least had seen the outside world. Maybe where they lived in Maine was okay, but there were a lot of worse off areas and him and his dad and seen a lot of bad things. I guess that could do something to you.

There was also the practical issue that we piloted and trained together. As much as I wanted to, I doubt I could persuade my father to switch out Vance for another pilot. Dad had told me that EVA was literally built around the pilot, that there was no one else in the world that could pilot my EVA, and the same would be true for Vance. Like it or not I'd be stuck with him even if we did breakup, and considering just how important it was what we were doing I wasn't really in a position to do anything about it. But it would be painful and awkward to be with Vance afterwards, and I dreaded having to go through that.

I didn't really know what to do, as part of me increasingly wanted to just forget what happened yesterday and try to reset somehow. I already missed his warm embrace, and I knew I was going to really miss getting a kiss good night from him. Not sure of the plan I decided to just avoid him for the day as much as possible, and just not let him get close to me. I had a right to be angry, and I was still really angry at this moment.

I finally left the penthouse about one o'clock, still wearing my new leo but paired up with a white pleated skirt and a pair of white ballet flats. It was really hot that day as it was early August, and it felt like a sauna outside so I was glad I wasn't wearing much on. My dad's driver took me to the EVA training area, which was out the outskirts of the base and designed to look from the outside like a warehouse and not anything important. I decided to go through my training courses for the day and if possible try and break away during the dinner period by going to the pool and eating there after swimming, and on a day like this I already wanted to cool off.

Unfortunately when I got through all of the security checkpoints and finally underground, Vance was waiting for me in front of the locker rooms. He was dressed in normal athletic wear, and held my giant stuffed tiger price in his hands. Shit, I thought to myself, there's gonna be no avoiding him today.

"Hey, Tiger," he said to me softly, trying to get back to his charming side. I just pushed by him, trying to make my way into my locker room where at least I'd be isolated for a few moments before our first training period. Vance however shifted his position to just in front of the locker room door. I could feel my anger really coming on but I tried as hard as I could to clamp it down. "Vance," I said in a soft but stern voice, "would you please let me get inside."

He looked at me like I hadn't understood anything he had just said. "You know," he said, pointing at the tiger in his hands, "he really missed you last night. I had to sleep with him just to calm him down and this guy really snores!"

Not funny I decided, and I again try to push my way to the door but Vance wouldn't budge. "Vance," I repeated to him, "please get out of my way."

"Sure, fine," he said as he relented, allowing me to open the door and get inside. I didn't need to change into anything just yet as we mostly had classroom-type instruction today, so I just grabbed a notebook out of the locker that was inside the room along with a pen. I took my time arranging everything, hoping Vance would at least get the message that I didn't' want to talk to him today. But that wasn't going to happen.

"You know, Tiger," he said from the other side of the door. "You should know I gave those rabbits a good gravesite."

That did it. I swiveled around and burst through the door ready to punch him. "Yeah, and they wouldn't be dead if it wasn't for you!" I shouted at him. Vance backed off if only just slightly, dropping the tiger on the floor and putting his hands in front of him for protection. "Well, you don't know that."

"What do you mean? Of course they'd still be alive!"

"Except you do know wolves come out at night around here, right?"

"So!?"

"So, what I'm trying to say is that I buried them. Deep, so that nothing gets to them and some wolf doesn't dig them up for dinnertime. And their little rabbit families can have a funeral for them later on."

I really didn't have patience for this and finally let the gates burst open. "You asshole! Here we finally have a real date and everything was so wonderful with you and then you go and just blow those two away like that! How the hell could you do that to me?"

Vance looked at me calmly, shrugging his shoulders. "It's just who I am"

"Bullshit!"

"Hey, I wouldn't try to stop you from doing flips and twirls, would I? That's who you are, right?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So, that's the real truth about me, Erin. I'm a killer. That's who I am."

That was exactly what I was afraid of, and it was then I decided that we were done. "Go to hell," was all that I could mutter under my breath and I tried to push my way aside him and down the hallway towards our classroom. I only barely got by him until his hand was firmly around my wrist.

I gave him a good solid punch in the ribs and he flinched just a little but kept his grip firm. I tried again, this time shoving him all the way back into the wall but he still hung on to me. Finally I tried a judo flip on him by quickly pivoting to get his arm under my shoulder but he could see what I was trying and then pushed me back forcefully against the other wall.

We looked at each other, each one of us angry at the other. My face was flush red and quivering with emotion as I really just wanted to get away. I felt like screaming and I knew that if I said just the right thing loud enough dad's bodyguards, the ones that shadowed us nearly everywhere, would come running and even big and strong Vance couldn't defend himself against them.

"You want to hate me for being me you go right ahead," he told me to my face, "but before you do I want you to see something first."

"Like what?!"

"Come here," he finally said and then dragged me by the wrist down the hall.

We ended up at the pilot ready room, a regular-sized room with a few leather easy chairs and a large video screen on one side. This was usually where we got our mission briefings before working with the EVAs and it was set up similar to the pilot ready rooms that the military would use. Vance dragged me inside and pushed me down into one of the leather chairs, then went to the front and grabbed a remote control from the wall mount. He turned on the main screen.

"I want you to watch this," he demanded of me. I didn't say anything, still shocked that Vance dragged me here and shoved me into a chair.

The main screen started to play a video and at first there was a bunch of official-looking information from NERV's main location in Japan. Much of the wording was in Japanese, but there was also English there and those parts I could read. The first segment had a title called "UNIT 01 VS THIRD ANGEL COMBAT FOOTAGE TOKYO-III 2015.6.10." In the video footage, I saw one of the other EVA units, a large figure in with purple skin along with glowing green stripes. It had a giant spike or horn on top of its helmet, and stood at one side of a large city. On the other side was what I could only figure was an Angel, a massive bipedal and slightly humanoid figure in black and white, with a grotesque mask-like face.

As the Evangelion started to move towards the Angel, it took a step and then suddenly collapsed onto the ground. As it struggled to move, the Angel took no time in attacking, rushing towards the EVA with amazing speed and grabbing it off of the ground. A rod-like weapon came slamming down into the EVA's head several times until blood began to stream out of it. Blood that I knew was LCL, but it looked like a real person's blood when you saw it wounded like that and it was sickening to watch.

The Angel kept attacking the EVA over and over until it looked like it was lifeless and beaten. I felt scared as I watched the video: my father had always told us the Evangelion units were invincible, that with the AT Field they were practically invulnerable to attack from anything, yet here was an EVA getting beaten to a pulp. I gulped in my throat, wondering if that unit had a pilot in it like Vance and I, just another kid like us.

Suddenly the purple EVA came to life, using its hands to grip the Angel and throw it towards the other side of the cityscape. The Evangelion was in a fearsome rage, roaring like a monster in the darkness as it then rushed towards the Angel in its own counter-attack. The two giants met each other in between tall buildings and this time the NERV unit got the better of the attack as it started to viciously beat it opponent. The EVA's attacks became increasingly more savage, mashing its opponent to a bloody mess. In all of our practice with our own Evangelion units both in simulations and in the underground arena, nothing we had done was anything like what was happening in the video.

Finally the purple EVA was victorious, basically mashing its opponent to pieces. As it seemed like the Angel would finally give out, it jumped and embraced the unit, then self-destructed. There was a massive wave of flame and smoke where the camera was mounted and you couldn't see the result for nearly a minute. Then the dark, lanky silhouette of the NERV unit could be seen over the cityscape. The unit had survived: beaten, bloody, but was still alive. The video then ended.

As I finished watching the screen I noticed that my breath was heavy, and I had to admit that I was terrified by what I had just seen. We had spent nearly a year in preparation to pilot EVA, and now with the actual units I had thought we were mastering the Evangelion's abilities to move and fight. But all of our simulated enemies were nothing like what I just saw on the video. That Angel had looked bizarre and twisted, alien or even demonic in appearance, and the way that it swiftly moved was nothing like the targets we were being trained to just shoot at. It moved fast, fought without any mercy, and only when the Japanese unit responded in kind did it managed to win the fight. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and gulped hard. Vance now turned to me.

"Erin," he said, "I don't know what your dad told you about these things, but that's REALLY what we're going to be doing out there." I couldn't say anything in reply, but I knew things had really changed for us. Vance stared right at me. "Do you think you can fight one of those things?"

I was nervous, as my hands started to shake. "Um…I guess so."

Vance leaned right into me. "Well, you're wrong."

He stood up and found a stool, and then dragged it to where my chair was. Then he sat down and we saw each other eye to eye. "You go out there, the way you are right now, and I can guarantee you're never coming back."

"That's not true!" I defended. "I've…I've got a good sync rate! And all of my combat result scores are high!"

"All that is worthless against the real thing."

"But maybe our EVAs are better than theirs," I defended. "Dad's not going to just put me out there to die!"

Vance was unimpressed. "Do you think you can kill something like that?" I wanted to just nod but something held me back. I hadn't realized quite what were really supposed to be doing until now. "I'll do what I have to do."

"So what do you think is easier? Killing rabbits or killing those things?"

"That's not a fair comparison. Those rabbits weren't monsters!"

"No, but they were prey. And to those Angels, we're the prey. That is, unless we fight back."

"What does that got to do with what you did yesterday?"

"It's because if you want to survive in the EVA you have to be able to kill just like that!" Vance snapped his fingers as he spoke. "You have to be like that guy in the video was: able to take so much damage and then still be able to bounce back and fight to the death, and it was a fight to the death."

"That's not the same thing…"

"It IS the same thing, It's exactly the same thing! Either you're the hunter or the hunted. There's no other way."

I was trembling now, afraid of what I had discovered. EVA wasn't just some sort of real-life game, there was a terrible reality to it and I was right in the middle of the hurricane. "Dad won't…dad won't let me down like that. He's put his whole life's work into the EVA, there's no way he'll let me lose!"

"You have to learn not to trust anyone but yourself," Vance coolly countered. "Not even me, only if you have the strength to do this are you going to survive."

Vance moved closer now, his expression softening. The peaceful look on his face that I had grown to love so much came back. "Erin, why do you pilot EVA? Why do you do it?"

Taking I deep breath, I replied "I'm…I'm born to this. I'm meant to be a pilot."

"If you had a choice, would you still chose it?"

"I…I don't know. I guess I'd rather be doing other things but, it's so much a part of my life now that I don't know what else I'd actually do."

He straightened up in the stool, calm and collected. "You see, Tiger, that's the difference between me and you. You didn't have any real choice in this, you're here because of family and all. But me…I chose this." I blinked at him, not quite understanding what he meant but Vance continued. "I chose to take this on. I got the chance and I knew I needed to be here and I…" he was going to speak further but one of his headaches, one of the bad ones he'd get from time to time came to him. Without thinking I got out of the chair and came to him, and as he crumbled to the stool in pain I put my hand on him, trying to comfort him in any way that I could. I didn't hate him at that moment. I couldn't, not after what had just happened.

I took a moment to break off and searched the ready room for a First Aid kit. Finding one I opened it and took out a pack of pain-killers and returned to Vance with a bottle of water. He took the pills as I watched, my arms around him. He just sat on the stool and closed his eyes, grimacing for another minute or so and then finally he appeared relieved. The light came back into his eyes.

"Sorry about that," he said softly. I just smiled at him, relieved to have the space between us closed again. "It's alright," I replied softly.

"Hey, your tiger missed you last night."

"I'm sorry I left him out there. I missed him too."

Vance didn't say anything else. Instead he took his arms and put them around me. His hands felt warm to the touch around my body and the effect was powerful. I wanted to melt. I just saw those dark brown eyes and his little smile and I just wanted to have all of that pain and loneliness go away. He brought me closer and then kissed me right there. I welcomed it and the kisses then became deeper. I felt his tongue and not quite knowing what else to do I just touched it with my own, but I liked the way that it felt.

His hold on me became tighter and I shifted to help him bring me onto the stool. In a minute I had my legs wrapped around his waist, the two of us kissing as we balanced and while my balance was good his wasn't so much and then we tumbled onto the floor.

The little accident had broken up our silence and we both laughed and giggled at what had happened. He smiled broadly at me and I smiled back, happy to have him back. I didn't know how I was going to handle what else was going on in our lives, but just for the moment I didn't want to be alone and neither did he. Right there on the floor he embraced me again and I did him, and our lips met each other again, and we skipped our training session and spent the whole afternoon making out on the ready room floor.

Everything else went perfectly that night, as while working with the EVA I had achieved the highest sync rate so far, a solid sixty-two percent. I went back home happy, my stuffed tiger in my arms, at least relieved that I had managed to get reconciled with Vance and also do so well with my unit. I drifted off to sleep with my tiger snuggled right next to me.

* * *

 _Again, another chapter that felt good in the writing. Erin is getting all sorts of clues about what is really going on but she's still too caught up in things to put it all together._

 _Some readers have asked me about how long of a trip am I planning here? I'd say this story expect to go on for about 15-20 chapters all told, and we'll try to post new chapters every 15 days. We have one more to go before we take a big jump in the storyline so please check in with us in a couple of weeks. Thanks._


	7. Ghost

The following morning I woke up just before ten and then started to get ready for the day. No workout this morning, I decided. Today I would again play the princess to my prince, and I picked out another dress I hadn't yet worn, one that was green with white poka-dots, fitted with cap sleeves and a hemline that went to mid-thigh. I accessorized with white ballet flats again and my hair bangs were held back with a white hair comb. I wanted to look as pretty today as I could.

As I got dressed and ready, the recollections of my most recent dream ran through my mind. I had sort of thought that as things between me and Vance progressed thoughts of my "mystery boy" in the mountains would sort of fade away but instead they were actually getting stronger in these last few nights. I could see the image more clearly now and even hear their voices, the boy whom I dreamt about and the older man he lived with. There was one particular moment that stood out: I was inside of the cabin sitting down at a wooden table and working on yet another jigsaw puzzle. I didn't really do stuff like that myself, but there the boy was, rushing though solving the puzzle in front of him piece by piece. It seemed like he was very good at it and I could even make out the image, which was some sort of image of an Angel, not the kind we're supposed to fight but the old-fashioned kind with halos and wings. The puzzle was of an old painting, where there was this very feminine angel hovering over two children, one boy and one girl, and she was protecting them.

Anyway the boy rapidly solved the puzzle and then stopped some sort of a clock that was on the table. I could hear his voice clearly this time "Uncle," he said to the older man. "I beat the time!" The older guy, who I could now see more distinctly, muscular with graying hair and a moustache, looked back at me and asked "so you think you did well, huh?"

"Yup" I came back in a proud voice. The older man clearly wasn't satisfied, as he then took the puzzle and flipped it on its backside, where all of the pieces had only a cardboard surface. He then scattered all of the pieces until they were well-mixed up and then said to me. "Okay, lad, now solve it!" Oh, jeez! Puzzles were hard enough but now he's making the kid solve them just by the shapes! I could almost feel the disappointment of the boy as he was forced into trying to solve the puzzle again, and that was the strangest part of the dream: I could really feel how he felt emotionally. I sat there on my bed, now dressed up and holding my tiger in my arms, wondering what it all meant. Was I supposed to be the boy? What was I worried about? Supposedly dream science is this whole complex thing with all of these interpretations but I couldn't work out any possible meaning to any of these dreams. It was strange.

Once ready I came out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. To my surprise dad was sitting at the breakfast table, sipping coffee and eating toast while looking intently at his LCD tablet. He usually was gone by the time I woke up, and many times I even wondered if he even came home but unusually he was here today.

"Good morning, dear," he greeted me as I came out. "You look lovely."

"Thanks, dad," I told him as I sat down. I poured myself some orange juice from a carton that was on the table. "You're actually home today!"

"Well, I wasn't needed this morning in the lab and decided not to rush things. We'll have much to do today as it is. You should know that they are upgrading the unit most of today, we'll have an activation test only tonight after the modifications are done."

"Are we close to revealing the secret?"

"I think so, it will depend on how fast we can complete the units as they're still having components installed and other changes. Perhaps by the time your birthday comes around."

"Okay, cool. It'll be great not to be sneaking around so much."

"Oh, I think the Japanese will get quite a shock when they realize just what we've been up to." He allowed himself a small smile and I smiled back.

It was a little awkward sitting at a table and eating with Dad, we hadn't done this for a while in our own home as we've been so busy these last few months. I figured now that we finally had a quiet moment together that now was the time to talk about…

"Dad?"

"What, dear?"

"Um, can we go out to dinner at R&R this week?"

"Of course. I think tonight might be too busy, but perhaps next Sunday is better. Did you want to eat at Fung Lum's again?"

"Well, I want that, but I think Vance might prefer the steakhouse."

Dad propped up an eyebrow. "Vance Vinson?"

"Um, yeah. Could he go to dinner with us?" This was my way to indirectly introduce Vance to dad, and hoping he'd be good with it.

My father shrugged and looked resigned. "I suppose so." He turned his attention back to his tablet but still spoke to me. "You two are getting along well, yes?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

"Good," he said, and I felt incredibly relieved. I suppose dad didn't want to talk about the details of me and Vance but at least he seemed okay with the thought that we were getting along. I could only guess that dad probably knew a lot more than that, but didn't really do anything to stop us even now. It seemed a little funny that he was so accepting of me seeing Vance yet so overprotective of everything else in my life, but in any case I was at least happy I didn't have to worry about it much.

The two of us just sat there and continued with breakfast, and I moved on to just small talk with him. The dreams were making me curious and I decided to bring that up with him. "Dad, do we have any jigsaw puzzles around here?"

His eyebrow shot up again. "What makes you ask that?"

"Oh, I don't know. I keep having these weird dreams about puzzles and stuff."

"You dream about puzzles?"

"Well, I dream about this boy who likes puzzles." Suddenly dad put down his tablet and at least seemed interested in what I had to say. "Really? Go on."

I went on to describe what I had been having in the way of reoccurring dreams in the last two months. "It's like I have these dreams about living in the mountains, someplace way out in the countryside. There's like this cabin, and I live there with this old guy."

"What else?"

"The other really strange part about these dreams is that it's like it's not me, it's like I'm living in this boy's head, I can hear his voice and stuff but not my own." I leaned over to Dad playfully. "Did you and Mom want a boy instead of me?"

Father was a bit taken aback. "No, your mother was quite satisfied with having you. How often do you actually have these dreams?"

"Nearly every night. They keep getting stronger and stronger, too. Like I can hear and see things more clearly. But it's just strange, every day or night is pretty much the same: I'm just living in this cabin, noting exciting."

Dad leaned back in his chair, looking at me intently. "Interesting. I'm wondering if it's feedback from the EVA."

"From the EVA?"

"Some sort of mental feedback that you're recollecting. They're repetitive, you say?" I nodded. "Yes but not exactly, very day is a little bit different from another but it's like a routine. Does that mean anything?"

"It might but I'm not sure," he said. "Erin, dear? Can you do me a favor?"

"Sure!"

"Please go to see Jo at the hospital before your training this afternoon. I think she may need to give you an exam." I shrugged my shoulders, unsure of what all of this meant. "Okay."

I left that morning, actually kissing my dad on the cheek on the way out of the townhouse. Despite his hard exterior I still loved him, and honestly didn't know whatever I'd do without him. As he suggested my first stop that morning was the hospital where Jo worked, and my dad's driver took the Mercedes and drove me there.

Once at the hospital I walked over to where Jo worked which was on the Third Floor. Jo's actual job was pilot health maintenance, although because EVA pilots were secret here at Second Branch that wasn't known to anyone but a few people. Officially she was a pediatric nurse, and probably the only one here at NERV-2. I went to go meet Jo inside of a small room she used as an exam and treatment room, as this was also where I'd have my routine physicals and by now Jo and I were very used to each other.

When I got to the exam room, I was surprised to find Vance inside. He was wearing a t-shirt and camo pants with combat boots, and looked just as surprised to see me there. "Hey, Tiger!" he said to me as I walked in. Standing next to him was Jo, and she was giving him an injection in the arm of an orange, slightly glowing serum.

"Hi!" I greeted him, waiting until Jo was finished to do anything else. Curious about why he was there, I asked him what the shot was for. He looked a little embarrassed about it. "It's just some sort of vitamin booster to help with my syncing," he told me. "Nothing weird." I nodded waited patiently, my hands held together in front of me until Jo was done with him.

The nurse put away her syringe and kit and then turned to me. "It's your turn next, Erin."

"What? Dad said to just come down and see you." I had thought it was for a physical checkup, not medication.

"He's worried about something, it seems. Anyway, just have a seat and I'll get right with you." She then left the room and Vance rose up from the chair. I was nearly in his arms as soon as he approached me.

"You look great!" said Vance as he snuck a kiss with me while Jo was out. "All dressed up and somewhere to go?" I just shrugged and looked at him, both of my hands in his. "Just felt like doing this. Do you like it?"

"Really cute, and the headband too!" I brushed the hair out of my eyes. I still wasn't quite sure how to handle Mr. Vinson, but I knew that somehow I needed to find a way as my heart was bound to him whether I liked it or not.

"I asked Dad if you could join us for dinner," I said to him. "He said he could do next Sunday night."

"Does that mean we're actually 'official?'"

"I think so, he didn't seem to mind when I brought it up. Kind of surprised he's not all paranoid about it."

"Maybe he's getting soft in his age." I playfully punched Vance in the chest. "I don't think so. Anyway, I've got just an activation test today. You?"

"Tactical training with my dad's men on the firing range," he told me. "Also, they're still working on my unit so nothing tonight for me."

I leaned on him a little. "Can you come and see me tonight at the cages then? Just before I get started."

"No problem." We were going to kiss again but then Jo came in with another syringe. "Okay, lovebirds, here we go. Erin, can you sit down please?" I did so and Vance turned around, "Hey Tiger, I'm already running late."

"It's okay," I replied, "See you tonight, Vee." I took my two fingers and put them against my lips, and then pretended to blow it across the room. Vance used his hand to catch the invisible kiss and promptly slapped it against his cheek. "Later, Tiger." He then turned and left.

Jo put a rubber lash on my forearm to get my blood vessel propped up. I have tiny arms, so when she's done anything like an injection with me she has to use the lash plus a really small needle to get through. She was however very careful and within a minute had the needle going into the vein in my elbow, only hurting a little when she put it in. Just as she did so Dr. Foch, the old French scientist from below, came inside the exam room.

"Nurse Belknap," he asked, "did you get instructions for medication for the pilots today?"

"Just the usual for Mr. Vinson, but Miss Erin has something new today."

"Why wasn't I notified? I only found out because the pharmacy called me for confirmation."

I didn't realize Dr. Foch was that involved in my care but apparently he was. "It was a direct instruction from Dr. Forrestal," Jo told him. She finished the injection and then disposed of the needle as I waited for her to put a bandage on the opening. Not sure of what all of this meant I just sat there in the chair and listened, hoping that it wasn't bad in some way,

"What did you just give her?"

"200 miligrams of Hydroclomipramine."

Old Bernard seemed very concerned with what Jo just did. "Why?"

"Dr. Forrestal was concerned about feedback from her higher sync and wanted something to help stabilize her alpha nerve."

"Our scoundrel chief scientist is not a pharmacologist or a neurologist. How did he come up with the treatment diagnosis?"

"I don't know, I can only assume this came from biomedical."

"Anything involving Evangelion pilot physiology has to go through me, you know that. Especially this sort of thing." Foch said "Evangelion pilot" out loud and that turned a couple of heads outside our door. Unlike nearly everyone else here, old Bernard had a lot more contempt for dad's secrecy.

"I'm sorry, he's both the program director and Erin's father. If he gives me an order to expedite treatment I can't refuse it."

"I feel okay," I volunteered. Indeed, I didn't feel anything different after getting the injection.

The old scientist turned to me. "I'm sure you do. Mademoiselle Erin, please do me a favor and come to my lab this time tomorrow. I promise you I'll give you all of the butter cookies you like but just be sure to come." Unsure and now just a little worried, I nodded and agreed to meet him. Foch then turned to Jo. "I sincerely hope her father was careful with that diagnosis."

"I'm sure he was," was Jo's reply. "And yes, Bernard, I know that you didn't come here today either."

"Very good," he said, satisfied that his intervention was still a secret between the three of us. He then left quickly out the doorway. I looked up at Jo with a worried expression on my face. "What was the medication for, anyway?"

"It's a dream suppressant," she answered, then changed the subject. "Lunch?"

* * *

Despite my father's earlier objections, I still saw Dr. Foch from time to time, enough to call him "Uncle Bernard," when I did. Mostly it was just for those awesome cookies and tea that he had in his basement lab. But up until that day I really had no idea his interest in me was anything more than just entertaining a bratty teenaged girl. Perhaps I should have been more worried, but I trusted my dad and my thoughts that day were still filled with Vance, and how I felt when I was with him. But Vance was right about me, I really was pretty naïve.

I had a slower day that day so after a long and filling lunch with Jo talking about me and the boy I just walked around the grounds a bit, all dressed up as I was. I took a hat and sunglasses with me so I was okay with being in the sun, then found a patio table and got a book out of my handbag to read for the afternoon. I spent most of the day in the base hospital patio reading Barbara Cortland and yes, it was so predictable and melodramatic but I just couldn't help myself as I loved stories where virginal girl is saved by a mysterious strapping young man. I could see myself as the beautiful girl in serious trouble and Vance as the strong, silent and sort of dangerous type and it totally fit. I was happy to imagine it being that way.

By the evening I went over to the underground EVA complex, walked straight to my locker room and changed into my plug suit. As usual I removed any makeup I was wearing, plus removed my earring studs as none of that was allowed while I was in the entry plug. After I was completely dressed and ready I went outside but I didn't see Vance outside the locker room. Instead he met me by the doorway that led to the EVA cages. He was still dressed in his combat fatigues, and looked a little roughed up from the day's training.

"Here to see me off," I asked as we walked together hand in hand towards my unit.

"Yup. Dad wants to know if I can get dinner with him tonight, something he wants to talk to me about, so I won't be here when you're done."

"It's okay, I'll see you tomorrow morning then." We arrived at the cage and right where my entry plug door was. The hatch was opened up all the way, just waiting for me to go inside. I turned to him and said, my hands on his chest. "Really wish you were doing this with me tonight."

"Yeah, well, one night off is okay, right?"

"I better see you tomorrow or I'll get lonely."

"Don't worry. I'll be there."

I then leaned up on my toes and kissed him right on the lips, nice and slow. I wanted it to be more than just a kiss, more like an invitation to do things together tomorrow. Then I let it go and walked towards my EVA. Just before I got inside, I turned around and saw Vance just standing there and watching me go.

"I love you."

He looked at me again with that soft expression of his, those brown eyes looking at me gently. "I know." I smiled, knowing he was trying to be like one of his movie heroes, and that was alright with me. I then got inside of the entry plug and got ready to pilot, and the ground crew came and closed the hatch behind me.

That was the last time I ever saw Vance alive.

* * *

The activation test took a while that night, and I ended up spending over an hour sitting in the entry plug un-inserted while engineers tried to fix something on the unit. I didn't mind the peace and quiet so far, but spending an hour in a confined space that's filled with liquid that you're breathing and not being able to do much of anything does get a bit irritating after a while. I had no choice but to wait for the engineers to give an "all clear" signal so we could get stared.

Finally it came and the entry plug was put back into the EVA unit. "Commencing activation of Unit 04" came the voice of one of the technicians in the control box. My video display went through its usual set of start-up schematics until the visual of the outside of the unit was made available. Not really crazy with the delays, I fidgeted in the throne seat. "Everything okay, Erin?" My dad asked on the audio.

"Sure, sure. I'm fine. I just wish we could get this over with so we can go home."

"I know," he said to reassure me. "It's just a routine activation test, so bear with us a little longer."

I sighed and resigned myself to losing the next couple of hours. "Alrighty."

There was a few more minutes to go as the unit was slowly put through the activation checklist, moving at a snail's pace as the technical team was checking new software installation and wanted to make sure each step went as needed. After a while we got to Step 2064 and just at the threshold for full activation.

"Doctor Forrestal," I heard the technician say. "Everything reports normal so far."

"Very good," came dad's voice and he seemed satisfied. "Proceed with synchronization."

At this point I really regretted not getting a light dinner before getting into the plug, I was starving so badly my stomach's growl could literally be heard over the speakers. I was a little embarrassed but I suppose I could impose on Dad a bit after making me sit through all of this. "Suddenly I'm very hungry," I reported.

"So how about Chinese tonight?" he asked, not missing a beat for what I wanted. Normally Fung Lum's would be closed by the time we finished but I'm sure dad could pull strings.

"That sounds good. I could really go for some Walnut Cream Shrimp…" Just as I finished my sentence I suddenly noticed something at the far end of the entry plug. About six feet away from the throne I saw this white, cloud-like thing in front of me. It didn't make any noise at first, but I watched it as it started to swirl around. Up until now I had never seen anything like it inside of the entry plug.

"What's that?" I asked aloud. A second later the operator's voice came over the speaker again. "There's an unusual reading in the entry plug!"

"What is it?" my dad asked the technician and he replied "It's some sort of energy form but I can't determine the type."

I kept looking at the cloud and it was both growing in size and also moving closer to me. Was this part of how the EVA worked? I didn't know at all but it didn't seem like something dangerous just yet. I had a certain calmness about what this was. The cloud got even larger and then began to transform, forming up elongated appendages and taking a shape that was more firm. Within a few more seconds it looked less like a cloud and more like a statue of a person, with a head, arms, and a body. Long hair came from the back of the head and to me it seemed feminine, like that angel image from the dream I had with the puzzle boy.

The cloud statue drifted closer to where it was just in front of me, only inches away from my face. I was more scared now, here was this thing that looked alive and able to move on its own. I gulped and my heart beat fast, yet I was curious about this thing. My mind lost connection with everything else and for a moment I had forgotten even where I was. I reached out with my hand and tried to touch the cloud figure where its face was. The face looked like one of those modernist type sculptures where's all smooth and there' no features at all.

Both scared and intrigued, I asked the floating angel thing "who are you?" The face began to start forming. Over the speakers I heard the controller's voice again, and now he was in a very panicked mode. "Energy reading is increasing dramatically!"

Father decided he had enough. "Stop the activation! Erin?"

I barely heard the voices in my head but I was captivated by the face of the ghost. For a moment I could see just hints of an eyes, nose and mouth. It looked beautiful, like a porcelain sculpture from the ancient times. Then the eyes looked right at me and I got startled, and jerked back from the figure. My dad tried to call to me again. "Erin?!"

The face continue to change. The eyes got larger, then sunk inside of the figure's face as large holes appeared. The same thing happened to the nose, and the mouth became wider and wider. Teeth were seen and then the face became less oval and more like a head. The rest of the ghost's body also formed, as the arms became more solid and then you could see bones in the arms and hands. I saw the ghost take two bony hand and then try to touch me with them. I looked in front of me and suddenly the head had become a skull. Suddenly frozen, I was unable to move as I felt the skeleton hands touch either side of my head and when they did so my whole body became ice cold.

Now frightened to death by what I was seeing and feeling, I panicked and struggled to push myself out of the control throne. "Get away from me!" I shouted as I tried to leave the seat, but the ghost pushed down against me and I fell back against the back of the throne seat.

"Erin!" Over the speakers I could hear my father shouting orders to the operators. "Force eject the plug!" The controller's panicked voice came back again. "Entry plug not responding, sir!"

The ghost came right up against me and my whole body shivered. I tried to get out of the throne seat but I was pinned in as the milky-white colored specter's arms expanded to keep me penned in and unable to get away from it. Terrified, I saw the thing's face as the dark holes of its eye sockets looked right at me. The jaw dropped down and stretched wide open. By now my entire body was shaking, and I was so scared I couldn't even speak. Someone save me, Dad, please save me from this thing! I don't want to pilot anymore. Not if this thing is what lives inside of here! Oh God, please…

The head stretched out and was now just against my face, close enough for me to feel the icy cold breath against it. My mouth gaped wide open, I was sweating all over. Then the skull's mouth opened wider and I felt a blast of ice cold air all around my own face, and suddenly this horrible wail that came from the ghost. I couldn't take it anymore, I was going to die, I knew it. Finally from the ghost loud words came out of its mouth and it sounded horrible, like some sort of demonic language that I couldn't understand. But yet there was this feeling that somehow I knew what this was. Something gripped me inside, something that touched my own fears, all of things in my heart that I had hidden and locked up were suddenly released and flowed through my body like icy tentacles. But I couldn't take it anymore, I felt ready to explode and so I screamed and screamed as loud as I could.

The very last thing I heard was my father's voice over the speaker. "ERIN!" Then I suddenly felt limp, and everything around me all went black and silent.

* * *

 _If you've read the first Blue Rose story you of course know how this runs, but now we have the whole background to what happened. While this was quite fun to write we are going to have a significant change of pace starting with the next chapters as we plunge deeper._

 _Fung Lums was the same of a Chinese food restaurant (now closed) that used to be right next to Universal Studios Hollywood. Completely Americanized Chinese food but the décor was amazing._


	8. Sleeping Beauty

All I can remember about what happened next was this moment of strange "fuzziness," I don't quite know how else to describe it. It was a dream yet it felt different and I wasn't quite sure why.

It was night and I was out of doors, I can remember feeling the cool ground on my bare feet. A cold wind blew and I could hear it whistling through the trees as I stumbled along in a daze. Unsure of where I was going, I saw a light in the distance and I moved towards it.

The light came from a small building that was in a clearing within a forest, and as I moved closer I saw what looked like a door. Something was drawing me closer, something that had a hold of me inside and it wanted me to go to that door. I obeyed it, and slowly raised my hand to knock.

I knocked on the door once, but there was no response. I tried it again and still nothing answered. For a third time I then pounded on the door. It was then that the door finally opened.

As I looked to see who it was that opened the door, what I remembered most was their eyes. Green eyes that were like mine, and a face like mine. Then a voice inside my head said in a ghostly whisper "Find the other." I couldn't remember anything else of what happened after that.

* * *

When I finally woke up the first sound I heard was a soft "beep…beep…beep" that was next to me. I slowly opened my eyes and tried to breathe. My body ached all over and felt stiff. Something brushed against my face and I could barely move my hands. The light in the room seemed bright and I noticed that there was very soft music turned down low, just audible enough to fill the silence of the room.

Where was I? I slowly turned my head to the right and saw a row of hospital equipment. Noticing that there was a pulse monitor attached to my finger and an IV injected into my elbow I realized that I was a patient here, wherever here was.

It felt so difficult to move, like gravity was pushing down against me on the bed. My legs could barely work, and my neck felt incredibly rigid. I opened my eyes wider and looked around, and found that I didn't recognize this place at all. It didn't look like any of the hospital rooms in Second Branch that I had been to.

There was light from the windows dimmed by blinds that were pulled down. There was also a TV monitor hung against the far wall of the room but there was nothing playing on it. I took another deep breath and tried to figure out what was going on, to me my brain felt thick as a brick. What happened? How did I get here? The only thing I could remember then was being inside the EVA and doing…something.

After what I think was a few minutes someone walked into the room. She was short with auburn hair and hazel eyes, and wore a white-colored nurses uniform, more like the traditional ones with dresses and white tights and not hospital scrubs. When she walked in initially she started to look at the chart attached to the end of my bed, but once I nudged myself her head turned towards me and her eyes immediately went wide.

"Doctor!" she shouted out the door way. "Doctor! Sleeping Beauty's awake!"

 _Sleeping Beauty?!_ How long had I been here?

A few seconds later another white-clad nurse came into the room along with a man wearing a doctor's coat over a shirt and tie. The doctor, who I guess was maybe in his forties with graying hair, immediately got a penlight and shone it in my eyes as the first nurse tried to speak to me. "Erin? Erin? Are you alright? Can you hear me?"

I tried to speak but instead of words my voice came out like a screech, my throat was incredibly dry. One of the nurses rushed to get me water and then after the doctor was finished examining me gave me a small sip from the cup.

"Erin?" the first nurse asked again in a voice that sounded to me like it was from the southern USA. "Erin are you alright?"

"Um…" I replied weakly, "I, uh, I don't know…"

"She's awake!" the doctor said to the others. "When did you notice this?"

"Just now," the first nurse replied. "I came in her to check on her medications and saw her eyes open and that she was moving."

"Erin, dear, how do you feel?" asked the doctor.

"Where am I?" I asked instead.

"You're in a safe place, we're taking care of you now," said the first nurse.

"But where is this? Is this Second Branch?"

The nurse looked puzzled. "Second Branch?! Second Branch of what?"

Now I was scared. "Second Branch of…NERV." I felt incredibly weak as I spoke, like it took every effort to get the words out.

"NERV?" the nurses asked together and then looked at the doctor. The doctor looked very concerned but didn't say anything right away.

I pushed further. "Where's my dad?"

Rather than respond to me, the doctor spoke to the first nurse. "Send an email to the address on the chart, tell them she's awake and active," he instructed. "Then wait for them to reply."

"Yes, doctor," she replied and then left the room. The doctor then spoke to me. "Honey, Erin," he said, "listen to me carefully. We don't know where your father is right now."

"What…" I'd have been more panicked if my energy wasn't so low. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that you were brought here, to us, for safe keeping, by someone who was very concerned for your health and safety," the doctor told me. "That means you're important to someone."

"But where's my dad? Where is this place?" I started finding my energy coming back and tried to move myself out of the bed.

The doctor whispered to the second nurse. "50ccs of ambrozil, get her calmed down," then he turned to me again. "Erin, you need to settle down. You were out of it for a while. I suppose a lot of things have happened since you came here."

"But where am I?" I tried to sit up in the bed but found my body still too weak to do much. Instead the second nurse put a syringe in my IV and a moment later I felt more sleepy. I couldn't force myself to stay awake but I didn't like this at all. "Where am I? Where's my dad?" I kept asking. "What are you doing to me?" It's all I could say as I drifted again into unconsciousness.

I woke up some time later, in the same hospital bed and room. Not much had changed since the first time I woke up, but there was no one in the room. While I felt awake it was hard to concentrate, and the only indication of change was that the outdoor light from the windows wasn't so bright this time.

Closing my eyes to focus my strength, I brought up my left arm to my face. On my wrist was a hospital wristband, with the words "ERIN ?" typed out on the sticker. Erin _Question Mark?_ No last name? They didn't even know who I was. That was the first time I got the feeling that something very bad had happened.

Trying to figure out what to do, my most obvious course of action was to find a way to communicate back home. Was I kidnapped? Had there been an accident at Second Branch? Or maybe the Angels had finally come and wiped it out, and I somehow survived. I just didn't know. I closed my eyes to concentrate again, this time to move my legs and then I was able to get them to move and then bend. Good, I thought, at least I wasn't paralyzed.

I felt something brush against my face again and used my left arm to get it out of the way. It felt a little like coarse fabric but when I tried to push it away I noticed it bounced back again. Feeling where the strands came from I discovered that it was in fact my own hair: it had grown long, long enough to go down below my neckline. Wherever I was I had been here for at least several months, assuming that my hair hadn't been cut already. Knowing that contributed even more to the dread I was now feeling.

Marshalling up all strength that I could find, I finally got myself to sit up in the bed. My body felt very light, I was skinny enough to feel the ribs in my body. Trying to focus on my situation I looked around the room for anything like a telephone and after a minute found one that was hung on the far wall.

I didn't want to trigger any kind of warning that I was out of bed so I tried to very carefully move to the right side of the hospital bed, where the machines and IV were. I didn't take out my pulse monitor and found the IV stand, noticing that there were wheels underneath. Figuring that maybe I had enough space on that cable between my finger and the heart monitor to make it to the wall I slowly eased my way out of bed.

Slipping over one side my feet touched the floor and I promptly tumbled downwards. I hadn't walked in months, so my legs weren't ready to move this far. I struggled and pulled myself up on the IV stand, and used it as a sort of crutch to hobble my way across the room and to the far wall.

I stopped by the windows and took a peek out of the blinds that were closed. Outside seemed like an ordinary hospital, although not modern-looking like the one at Second Branch was. There was a grassy park that was inside the grounds and then another building across from us. I had no view beyond that.

Moving slowly, I shuffled over to where the wall was, carefully to try and not pull out the heart monitor from my finger. The telephone was wall-mounted and had several buttons below the main dial pad that I knew must be outside lines. Looking around to see if I had been noticed out of bed I saw no one, the door to my room was closed.

I picked up the receiver and listened for a dial tone. There wasn't one until I pushed one of the buttons below, this was how the Second Branch phones worked where you had to get an outside line to call away from the base. I may not have had anyone in the outside that I could call, but I saw how my dad did it often enough and tried it. From that I got a dial tone and I dialed my dad's private mobile number.

The phone rang once and then a recorded message came on. "This line is disconnected or no longer in service…" Not good. I tried again on my dad's mobile phone and then for the lab line, all with the same recording. If I felt frightened before, I was truly scared now. Something had happened to him, I knew it.

Taking a risk I tried one other thing: I dialed the operator by selecting an outside line and dialing "0." I was getting tired again, I knew that there were lots of painkillers in that IV and I wasn't going to last much longer, but I had to at least figure out how to call home.

A live voice came on the receiver. "Operator."

"Yes, I need to dial a number. 702-321-6669." It was one of my dad's other mobile numbers and one I knew he would keep with him no matter what.

"Area Code 702? Are you sure?"

"Yes, ma'am" I whispered into the phone. "702."

There was a long, silent pause and then the operator said "Area Code 702 is no longer operational."

"Oh, did they change the area code?" I asked.

"Miss," the voice came back slowly. "There's nothing there anymore."

Before I could say anything further the door to my hospital room opened and the doctor came in, followed by one of the nurses and two larger men in white unforms. I tried to speak into the phone again but the doctor took the receiver and put it back while the two larger men grabbed me.

"What's…what's happening?"

"Now, Erin, you're going to be alright," the nurse tried to re-assure me. "There's no need to get out of bed!"

"Why can't I call home? Where's my dad?"

As the nurse tried to calm me down the doctor stuck another needle in my arm. "Erin, there's someone coming to get you tomorrow," she told me. "They'll take care of you."

"Where's my dad? Where am I?! What happened!" I started to get more hysterical as the orderlies picked me up and dragged me back to my bed. I felt myself becoming weak and drowsy and the voices around me seemed distant, the light became more dim. In another minute I had again lost consciousness.

* * *

For the next day I was in bed, drowsy from medication and unable to say much. I saw the nurses maybe twice, one to feed me solid food and once to change me out of my hospital gown and into a white cotton nightgown. I tried asking questions again that second time but still the nurses didn't give me any answers, only saying there would be someone coming tomorrow to get me.

At this point the continued isolation was making me angry. Unable to get even an answer of where I was (or even _when_ I was), I marshalled up my strength and prepared myself to try and make a break for it. I had woken up the following morning and saw that the IV was no longer in my arm and my pulse monitor was gone. I was just in the room by myself, no doubt being prepared to present me to whoever it was that was coming over.

Was it Dad who had engineered all of this, spiriting me off to a secret location while he took care of urgent matters at home or wherever he was now? It could have been, and only that gave me hope that he was okay. Dad was at times really, really paranoid and always warned me about enemies to him and our project. I was just hoping either he or I hadn't fallen into their hands.

I made an attempt to get out of the room but the only door was locked, and I found that the windows were locked as well. I also discovered that the phone that used to be on the wall was also gone. In any desperation to get any information at all I tried turning on the TV monitor but even though it powered on there was no signal from anything. The radio only played music, and not from a radio station. It was a nightmare being in here and I really only wished at this moment to wake up back in my bed at the penthouse and laugh it all off later with Vance over cookies and milk. Failing to get out of the room I went back to the bed and waited, not sure what to expect next.

About an hour later I heard voices outside in the hallway and then hopped off the bed, this time determined to at least get someone's attention that I was being kept here. Running to the doorway, I pounded on it with my fists, shouting "Hey, let me out of here!" I kept at it for a few minutes until I saw a large shadow in front of the frosted glass of the door, and then backed up to see if they'd finally open it.

The door opened slowly and someone entered. He was large and looked quite old, and rolled in on a motorized wheelchair. The older man wore a green uniform tunic and most notably also wore a metallic vision enhancer. I realized as he rolled in that I had seen him once before! That time he wasn't in the wheelchair but I remember him from the first night I got Unit 04 activated, as he was the strange old man who was part of the group of VIP visitors we had that night. As he rolled into my hospital room someone closed the door behind him and then we were alone.

"Who are you?" I asked him.

"My name," he said in a deep, drawn-out voice, "is Chairman Keel. I'm an old friend of your father's. You are Erin Forrestal, I presume?"

Finally someone at least knew who I was. "Yeah, that's right. Where's my father?"

Keel didn't answer me at first. "You are the pilot of Evangelion Unit 04? Yes?"

"Yes, I am," I said to him with some pride in my voice.

The chairman took a remote control from his wheelchair and then pointed it at the monitor hung on the wall of my hospital room. The TV set turned on but now had a signal, and this was from a video file with messages from the UN about how secret the images were. There was a caption on the video that said "NERV-02 Incident 2015.10.28," and from that I dreaded what I earlier feared might come.

"Six months ago you suffered an accident inside of Unit 04, correct?"

My memory of how I got here was still very cloudy, and I didn't remember much of it at except that I was in the entry plug. "I think so, I don't remember. All I remember is waking up in this place two days ago."

"Yes. Well my child, quite a lot has happened. Unfortunately while you were gone there was an act of sabotage at your father's facility. This," he motioned to the screen with his remote, "is what happened two months ago."

I looked up at the screen and saw an image of Second Branch taken from very high up, possibly from a satellite. You could see the entire base stretching for miles across, sitting in the middle of the desert. Suddenly there was an orange glowing from the center of the base, where I knew the main assembly area was for the EVA units were. The orange disk expanded rapidly to envelop the entire base, and then was followed by a billowing grey cloud. The camera suddenly went into static.

Gasping with shock, my eyes still glued to the monitor, I asked the Chairman "What…what happened?!"

Keel looked at me and in a slow, sad tone said "I'm afraid my child that I have some bad news…" My glance went back to the monitor and I saw the image of Second Branch again, only this time Second Branch wasn't there. Instead there was a gigantic crater where my home used to be.

Second Branch…my home… was destroyed.

My body shook with panic as my worst fears were realized. Something horrible had happened while I was out of it all. I tried to speak but I couldn't, and Keel slowly gave me the rest of the story.

"A little over two months ago your father attempted to install an S2 engine into your Evangelion Unit, EVA-04. However the unit was sabotaged during the test and created a Singularity, or Sea of Dirac that enveloped the entire facility. I'm afraid," he said slowly, "that there were no survivors."

Trembling, I started to cry. All I could think about was Dad. He was there, and now he was gone.

"NO!" I shouted, "no, please tell me he's not gone."

"I am sorry," was all that the Chairman had to say.

I struggled to figure out what was happening but my mind just couldn't wrap itself around it. I fell to my knees and put my head to the floor. What was all of this? I had just stepped into the entry plug and then suddenly everything changed.

Keel didn't try to comfort me, but instead spoke to me further. "My child, there is much you need to know but we cannot continue our discussion in this place. Your father was kind enough to entrust you into my care, and I will be sure of that. But we will need to leave shortly if we are to avoid those who pursue us."

I didn't want to move at that moment. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and die right there. The old man didn't wait for me to recover, and a few seconds later I felt myself picked up by two large men. Initially struggling to get free, I then felt the prick of a needle in my arm and then a sudden blackness. My journey had only just begun.

* * *

I woke up some time later, lying on yet another unfamiliar bed. This was in a very small room made out of metal. The air tasted of oil and salt and it felt buoyant, like we were floating. I shook my head and tried to snap out of whatever it was that happened.

Once I got down off the bed I noticed that my clothes were changed again, this time to a set of blue and white pajamas that were comfortable but a bit thin considering how cold this place was now. Was I on a ship? I seemed like it. I sighed deeply, and put my head in my hands. I didn't feel like myself, like somehow I was dragged out of my body and then stuck in someone else's. I hoped that this was all some sort of terrible nightmare still and that I was going to just wake up any minute now.

There was a clanging knock on the hatch. I didn't say anything. The hatch then opened and a man came in. He was dressed in a blue uniform and looked middle age and gaunt, European with short-cropped hair.

"Ah, you're awake," he said upon seeing me siting on the bed. "I'll go tell the Chairman, he'll want to see you right away.

"Where am I?"

"You're on a submarine," he said matter-of-factly, speaking in decent but accented English. "Be careful not to open the wrong door." I wasn't really in any mood for humor and didn't say anything in return. The man motioned to a tiny table that was bolted on the floor next to my bed, on top sat a black duffel bag and a plate of bread.

"If you're hungry, you should eat," he told me. "And then change into warmer clothes. We have some days to go on our voyage."

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere safe," he replied, not really answering my question. "I'll come back to collect you within an hour." With that he left the room.

While I didn't feel like doing anything, I was also cold and needed to warm up. There was no obvious heater in the room and only a very thin blanket on the bed to keep me warm. I went to the bag and found blue jeans and a blouse and sweater, plus just basic underwear including socks. There was also a pair of sneakers in the bag.

Noticing a very cramped bathroom built into my cabin I used that to change in, hoping in the back of my mind there weren't hidden cameras in here.

I didn't eat the bread, nor drank the water. I just let my mind go numb. If this wasn't a dream, then it meant my father was really dead, and so was everyone else at Second Branch. It meant that Vance was dead, it meant that Jo was dead, and all of those other people at NERV-2 were gone. I was truly an orphan now.

The tears just didn't come. I wanted to cry but I couldn't do it. I just couldn't believe any of it was true.

An hour later the man came back, and he escorted me down a crowded hallway towards another cabin further up the boat. The uniforms of the other crew matched his own, and most of them looked either Russian or some sort of European. As I moved past them I heard bits of Russian, something I had learned after having several gymnastics coaches from Russia.

We stopped at another hatch that was guarded by an armed soldier. The man spoke to him briefly and the guard picked up a phone and announced us. The hatch was then opened and I was shown inside.

This cabin was much larger than the one I had been placed in, and looked like a conference room. There were various military-style maps on the walls and computer equipment. There was only one other person other than me however, and he turned around in his chair as soon as the hatch closed behind me.

"You are awake, Pilot Forrestal?" the chairman asked me. I nodded, and grabbed my arms as despite my new clothes I was freezing cold.

"Sit down," he said to me, "and I will explain everything to you." I did as he asked, getting a seat next to him.

"Before I start, can you inform me as to what your father told you about Evangelion? About what its purpose was and what you were doing?"

I sighed deeply and answered. "Well, he just said that we were there to fight the Angels, that one day they were going to come and destroy mankind if we didn't do something about it and that's what EVA was for." The chairman nodded as I continued. "The last I remember is that the Angels did come, and they were attacking Tokyo-3, but not us. He was waiting until the right time to reveal our secret."

"I see," said Keel.

"Did Dad ever finish the project?"

"Yes, your father did fully complete both Evangelion units in his custody, and that is where I will start my tale. Not long after your accident your father was approached by another man who made a quite incredible claim: that your mother had in fact given birth to twins."

I nearly choked. "T..Twins!?"

"Yes. He had claimed that she gave birth to a son as well as yourself, and that he was entrusted by her to keep the child secret and away from your father."

"How is that even possible?! If my mom had twins instead of just me dad would have known it."

"Except that apparently your father was not actually present at the moment of your birth, a detail known to this man. This provided a modicum of authenticity, further reinforced when he presented the boy himself."

"So…this kid just shows up after, what, fourteen years?"

"Your father was quite skeptical at first, and put him to the test. However, this boy was actually able to activate and interface with your own EVA, and for your father that was convincing enough."

"Oh my God! Well, then was it actually true?"

"No," the old man replied. "We have evidence that this boy was using a sort of medicine to facilitate the link between himself and EVA. This however was unknown to the others and in the space of a couple of months this boy was able to ingratiate himself into your father's operation."

Keel continued. "The dark truth of the matter is that this boy was an agent for a rather nefarious cabal of men who wanted to control the Evangelion for themselves, to use them to achieve world domination. It was their plan to take over all of NERV and its branches, and then use the Evangelion to take over the world."

"Wow," was the only thing I could say.

"We were informed of us when one of the pilots, Vance Vinson, discovered that his own father was part of the plot."

That got my attention and my head went up. "Vance?!"

"Yes. The incident happened not long after your father revealed his work on Units 03 and 04. Both of the units were sent to Japan along with their pilots to train against the Evangelions based in Tokyo-3. It was during that time when Vance Vinson discovered that in fact several of the EVA pilots, including the impostor were involved with the conspiracy. He had tried to stop one of them from stealing an S2 organ from a destroyed Angel when he was killed."

I gasped in horror. "Vance was killed!? How?"

"He was mortally wounded when the pilot of Unit 04, the boy who called himself Patrick Forrestal, attacked him with his own EVA."

My own thoughts went to Vance at that moment. Poor Vance, he had been murdered! And by my own unit no less. Tears came flowing from my eyes and I trembled with emotion. Losing home was bad enough, but this was getting worse all the time.

"Your father, unfortunately, was not completely convinced that the boy was a traitor and while he held him in custody, your father still attempted to use him in an effort to achieve an activation of Unit 04 together with the S2 organ. This boy then, using both the EVA and the S2, created the Sea of Dirac that wiped out Second Branch."

"Oh, no…" I was now sobbing. What a horrible end to everything. "At least…" I struggled to say, "at least this kid is dead too, right?"

Keel just looked at me at first and didn't anything. I knew from his response that his story wasn't nearly over.

* * *

What I learned in the next half an hour didn't make anything remotely better. The boy who blew up Second Branch had in fact survived, as somehow the bad guys had recovered him and Unit 04 intact from the remains.

The Angels themselves were defeated, the final one being destroyed towards the end of last year, but then shortly after that the supreme commander of NERV, Gendo Ikari, launched a crazy plan to basically end the world. SEELE, which was the organization that the Chairman himself ran, used their own special Evangelions to try and stop Ikari. They succeeded but then ran into Vance's father and his commando force, and the Evangelions that they controlled. Unfortunately SEELE lost of most of their EVA units in that battle and then the Alliance, as they called themselves, were now currently in charge of Tokyo-3 and most of NERV's surviving EVA units and pilots, and were now hell-bent on world domination.

Some of the parts of the Chairman's story seemed incredible. When I asked if the other EVAs were like my own, with other children as pilots, Chairman Keel (who asked me to call him "Grandfather" instead of by his title) confirmed it was true. However two renegade NERV agents had managed to take control over the young pilots by emotionally manipulating them, and were now using them as cannon fodder in the current war. Most of SEELE's own EVA units didn't use children, or had any pilots at all.

Another shocking part of the story was about Vance's own father, Admiral Vinson. While he was often quite busy in the times that I saw him he always seemed sort of kind and decent, and Mrs. Vinson was about the sweetest person ever. To find out later on that he was a ruthlessly efficient killer, willing to sacrifice his own son in order to control NERV and EVA was horrible. I guess you never really know anyone.

After some reassurances that I'd be taken care of, Grandfather made sure I made it back to my cabin. I didn't say much in return, I was just too stunned to find out all of these horrible things had happened while I was in some sort of coma. I felt terrible, and when I finally did return all I could do is go back to my bed and cry myself to sleep.

* * *

No one bothered me much for the journey, except for making sure I was at least physically okay. For the next few days I just curled up in to a ball in one corner of the room and replayed everything in my mind over and over again. Dad was gone, Vance was gone, and everyone at Second Branch was gone, wiped out by some crazy kid. A kid who claimed he was my own twin.

I wanted to die. I just wanted to stop eating and then stop breathing and then just go away. No more dreams of a happy life, no more challenges like piloting or gymnastics or anything else. Just everyone and everything I knew was wiped out while I was away. It felt like I didn't really exist anymore.

But somehow I had survived. I was spared all of this. Why? I felt lonely, and just wanted to be around something, anything familiar. But no one came to my rescue, and no one was going to.

It was after about three days of doing nothing but sitting in my bed or on the floor when I finally decided to get up and get out of the cabin. The door wasn't locked, and I could walk around the submarine. No one really paid any attention to me. I spent a good hour just exploring things like I would do when was younger and lurked around all of the corners of NERV-2, although the sub was a lot smaller. Finally I made my way back to the Chairman's cabin and just stood there. The man I first saw on the boat, who I found out was named Doctor Kirov, saw me there and asked if I wanted to see the Chairman again. I told him that I did. He then used a phone mounted on the bulkhead and spoke on it, and in another minute they let me back in the room.

Chairman Keel was again seated in the conference room, looking at various maps and seemingly in deep thought. He heard the hatch close behind me after I stepped in the room, and then slowly turned in his chair towards me.

"Hello, Grandfather," I greeted him.

"How are you, my child."

"I feel like hell."

Keel didn't reply back immediately but we just sized each other up as I stood in front of him. "What can I do for you?" he finally asked.

"I want to get my EVA back," I told him, growling as I said it, "and I want to get the boy who stole it from me."

"Then we have the same objective. Please sit down and let us discuss our options."

* * *

 _This chapter is where we get the "pivot" of the story and how Erin's world completely changes. I think for anyone to wake up in a strange place Rip Van Winkle-style and find that everything you knew and loved is gone would be pretty frightened. That's she's emerged in the custody of SEELE only makes matters worse in ways that she's currently unable to fathom._

 _In the writing the chapter wasn't that difficult to put together except for the first paragraph, that was a last-minute addition which I felt was needed to link the narrative together better. Readers of_ The Blue Rose _of course know what's in the cabin, but Erin is still figuring this out._


	9. Dreams and Nightmares

When I finally got off that submarine I was a changed girl. The days of crying next to my bed ended and turned into days of working my mind into what had to happen next. I couldn't fix what was done but it could get back at the ones who did it and although that path wasn't going to be easy there was really no where else to go for me but up from the gutter. If you have nothing left, there's nothing to lose and that's what I felt by the time we reached landfall.

Our journey took a bit over a week until we arrived at…wherever we ended up, as I still didn't know and the others, not sure how much to trust me, didn't quite fill me in yet. Wherever it was it was underground, because as I debarked the boat along with Chairman Keel and his entourage it was deep inside of the earth, in what looked like a cave of some sort but reinforced with steel and concrete docks and scaffolding. It was dark inside, lit only by LED lights in various places. The air smelt like smoke or maybe sulfur, and there was felt like a hot wind from one direction of the cave.

"Where is this place?" I asked Dr Kirov while we disembarked, still trying to get the lay of everything and a bit frustrated at being kept in the dark.

"We are underneath a mountain range," he replied, "the hot air is from a volcano that we're close by, and that provides power to the base," My eyes went up in surprise, as a volcanic mountain range could be nearly anywhere in the world.

The group of us moved down the steel dock and towards an elevator bank. The Chairman, busy with other men who met him at the docks, spoke to me briefly while he motioned to a middle-aged woman wearing a uniform standing next to us.

"This is Ms. Krupp," he introduced, "she will be seeing to your welfare as you live here with us."

"Where are we?" I asked him directly.

"SEELE-2," he replied, "this is our secret base, our redoubt for us to rebuild and to strike back." To the woman he said, "please see to it Pilot Forrestal has suitable quarters and everything else required for her training." The woman sternly nodded and saluted the chairman.

"Thank you, Grandfather," I told him.

"No need. Just be ready when the time comes." With that he turned and led the way to the elevator banks with the group of men who followed and talked with him. I was left with Mrs. Krupp on the docks. Krupp, who was nearly as short as I was with sort of badly cropped reddish hair and a somber expression, sized me up as I waited for what would happen next. She took a firm hold of my upper arm and pinched it a bit, I winced at her as I protested, "Ouch, that hurts!"

"You are weak," she declared. "Months of being in a hospital bed has done that to you. We will get you back in shape." Krupp proceeded then to lead me to the elevators that would then take us to the fortress above.

After a long elevator ride we got out and then walked our way around the complex. Looking around me, I could see that this place was all hollowed out of a mountain, and surrounded with steel and concrete all around me. Parts of the fortress were spacious, and there was one atrium we passed by that received sunlight from the outside and was well-lit because of it. In there you could see above and I counted at least eight or nine levels. Soldiers and technicians in uniforms were all around.

From the atrium we walked further an into another spacious, darker area. When my eyes adjusted to the dimmer light I saw giant white figures that stood out against the darkness. There were several of them, up against two walls and cordoned off in giant steel cages. This was where SEELE kept their own Evangelions.

"Are these the Mass Production series that the Chairman spoke about?" I asked Krupp. She nodded, and pointed into the distance. "Yes. Two are survivors from the first round." These two EVAs were as massive as Unit 04 was. Colored a milky white, the had large heads with enormous mouths but no eyes, and were rippled with muscles all over their bodies. Both of the largest ones were kept waist-deep in a pool of liquid which I figured was LCL or at least a version of it, and most importantly they were moving as if they were alive, restless enough with energy that they had to be bound with giant steel chains and plates. They seemed scary and I was glad we were walking some distance away from them.

Next to the two largest ones were several others, all of whom looked like the first two but were not as large or as complete. One was big as them but had no arms, another two weren't as muscular but were thin and listless, and not moving at all. Another looked like it was only half-sized. "What about these?" I asked Krupp.

"Second phase of production," she told me. "To achieve our goal we will need to build many more."

We continued walking into the mountain fortress and I noticed that I was becoming quite tired, as it seemed like we went on forever. I felt humiliated that I had to stop and catch my breath several times along our way, I always thought of myself as an athlete and here I was being out-paced by an old woman. I shook it off as I saw Krupp's irritated expression and strove to make it the rest of the way to wherever we were going without stopping.

Finally we got to what looked like an upper deck of the fortress, with an alleyway that was filled with rows of hatches. There were two uniformed guards standing next to the corridor waiting for us.

"You will be directed to your room," Krupp told me before I could ask anything, "get rested and ready. Tomorrow your training will begin." Exhausted from the long journey by foot I just nodded at her and then one of the guards, someone who looked middle-aged with graying hair and dark eyes on a stern face, led be down the hallway nearly towards the end.

The guard opened up the hatch and showed me inside to a bedroom that seemed only slightly larger than the one on the submarine. Just the basics, all done in metal and concrete with adjoining bathroom that was thankfully much larger than the broom closet-sized one I had on the submarine. There was a bag on the table and a binder, plus blankets on the bed.

"If you need anything," the guard told me, "please just let me know and I'll take care of it." Unlike all of the other people at SEELE I'd interacted with, the guard's English was as perfect as anyone from America.

"Thank you," I told him.

"Don't mention it. You should get some rest." He then closed the hatch door, leaving me alone in the room. After he closed the door I thought to myself that the guard seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it and wrote it off to that he spoke good English.

I took some time to examine my new surroundings and they weren't remotely warm but it was more comfortable than the sub. The duffel bag on the table had clothes for a few days, including only basic things like t-shirts, athletic shorts, and things plus a track suit. There was another pair of blue jeans and a sweater, but nothing particularly fancy in the bag. No uniform either, I noticed. On the floor next to the table was another pair of running shoes.

From the bag contents I could only guess that I could look forward to a lot of physical training. That was fine with me. I was weak the way I was now and I didn't want to be weak.

Next to the bag was a binder and I opened it up. Inside the binder were papers and photos that were reports of what had happened with my Evangelion unit, and filling in the details of everything that the Chairman had told me on the submarine. I saw pictures of the other EVAs, the ones in Tokyo-3 that the enemy used, and I saw Unit 04 intermingled with them. That didn't make me feel good at all.

Continuing to flip through the binder, I saw a report on the destruction of Second Branch and read it. The report coldly detailed how my Evangelion was able to induce the black hole that swallowed up everyone inside. Everyone and everything was gone but she had survived, along with the current pilot.

I kept paging through the book and saw photos at the end, as they had placed in several pages of pictures taken all around Second Branch at the end of the binder. These were all places that I knew, various departments of the laboratories or engineering, or even of R&R. In the photos were all different employees of NERV-2, many of whom I knew personally. People who were now all gone, leaving families and grief behind.

I turned the page again and saw a photo of my father. It wasn't a recent one, as his hair had become much more grey in the last couple of years, but it was him. He always made an effort to look good and there he was in a white linen suit and tie, his beard neatly trimmed with a goatee like he preferred. He wasn't smiling but I could see his eyes and knew how familiar they were. Dad wasn't really a warm person, but I loved him just the same. I swallowed back the grief and traced my fingers on the photo where his face was. If only he knew what would happen, maybe it could all have been different.

Forcing myself to turn the page I got to the very end. There was one more photo of two teenaged boys, each of them wearing plugsuits. The boy on the left I knew well: it was Vance. Wearing his black and red livery, he looked tall and strong with a confident smile. Standing on the right was another boy, nearly as tall as he was, with messed up blonde hair and eyes that had my same eye color. He looked friendly, a small smile in the photo, and he was dressed in an orange plug suit that matched my own color pattern. The boy who called himself Patrick. The imposter.

Why had he done it? Why go to so much trouble to kill so many people? The chairman said that the renegades were very good at manipulating the pilot children, and this boy was part of the web but I knew there was more to it than that. Dad always said we had enemies, was he one of them? What was really going on?

From seeing Vance together with the kid that would kill him later, I couldn't hold back and started crying as I saw the photo, and I broke down and plunged my head right on the photo, sobbing as I did so. I wanted to just fix everything that I could but I knew that I couldn't. They were all gone. But I wanted to know why.

* * *

Finally getting myself motivated enough to clean up and change, and for the moment at least glad to have a decent shower, I knocked out in the little bed not knowing what tomorrow would bring and drifted fast and far asleep. It was then when the dreams started coming.

On that night I remember the first vision I had. I was on a sunny beach and looking out on the ocean. The images were a bit blurry and I couldn't hear much, but I that's when I first saw her.

Standing on the sands of the beach just where the ocean waves came in, she looked out onto the ocean. Her hair was an unusual shade of blue, and her skin quite pale. I looked like either she was naked or wore a while swimsuit I couldn't quite tell, but the girl just silently looked out into the distant ocean. I remember that it was unusually peaceful, but that image would stay with me for the days and weeks ahead.

* * *

Krupp was as good as her word. Starting the following morning I was woken up early and then told to dress for physical training. After a breakfast consisting of canned meat and something liquid I couldn't identify but that tasted quite fowl, I was brought to a weight room where Krupp and large, muscular German guy named Hotchkiss promptly had me doing weights and running on a treadmill for nearly the entire day. It was horribly painful and neither of my new coaches were particularly forgiving, but I was out of shape and I knew it, and I accepted the pain as the price for my recovery.

That went on for several days, basically a pattern of wake up, eat, exercise, eat, exercise, eat, exercise, shower, and sleep, and not much time for anything else. Neither of my coaches spoke to me of anything else other than what I had to do that given day, and much of it was working to restore any type of muscle tone I had as well as firm my body and get my cardio back to something normal. There wasn't anything delicate about this, no balance beam or uneven bars to swing on. Those days were gone for me.

After just three days of this I was completely exhausted, and dreaded getting up in the morning. My body ached all over, I could barely breathe and I wondered if we were high up in the mountain enough for the oxygen to be lower, or that maybe the air supply here had issues, it felt so difficult at times. I had terrible thoughts in the few moments that I had alone in my room, mostly about how one day I'd just go limp and then they'd just throw my useless body off the mountain. I thought it couldn't get much worse. But I was wrong, as the nightmares came that evening.

It started out in a dark room. I was lost and trying to find my way in a room that was pitch black. Suddenly there was a bright light and I saw what looked like a giant fish tank, with what looked like ugly fish swimming inside. But inside the tank the water wasn't blue, it was orange.

Standing in front was the blue-haired girl that I recognized from the earlier dream, where she was standing in front of the ocean. Here she was closer, and I could see her more clearly, including features of her face. Her eyes were unusual, maybe red or amber colored, and her skin was quite pale. She wore a white blouse and plaid skirt and was trying to say something but I couldn't hear it.

I noticed the ugly fish swimming in the tank were sort of just drifting and I tried to get a closer look at what they were, but then I saw something else inside of the tank. It was a person's head, a head with short-cropped hair that looked like the girl that was standing in front. I felt my throat gag on seeing that and then noticed that swimming all around weren't "ugly fish," they were body parts! Arms, legs, torsos, pieces of bodies of this same girl all swirling around together, and there must have been hundreds of parts. I wanted to throw up.

The vision was strong enough to actually get me awake, and I felt the bile coming through my throat. Feeling terrible and panicked I raced to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. There wasn't much that came out, and the heaves were just icky painful.

Now completely exhausted, I drank some water and then tried to go back to sleep again, hoping that at least the rest of the night would be more peaceful. It wasn't.

The second nightmare took place while I was in the entry plug. I was in some sort of battle and I could hear voices around me, both girls and boys, and no one I immediately recognized. The screen was in combat mode and there were combat alarms all around, it was frantic as I desperately tried to shoot the EVA's gun against far-away enemies.

My gun jammed and then I felt myself climb up a building trying to do…something I just wasn't sure. I could feel the EVA jump off the building I just climbed and then something very bright flashed in front of my video display. The whole entry plug shook for a few seconds. Then there was the burning.

Inside of the entry plug it got very, very hot, hotter than I'd ever felt before. I felt trapped and couldn't get out, and then I could sense the LCL literally boiling against the skin of my face. But the boiling became a scratching and itching, and then it was a burning.

I screamed loud in agony, it was like the skin on my face was literally burning off. I brought my hands to my face to try to stop it but I couldn't. I could only hear my own screaming voice along with someone else's. I kept screaming and screaming and then suddenly the noises stopped.

There I was sitting up in my bed. Not thinking about anything else and still feeling the heat on my skin, I rushed to the bathroom and turned on the faucet with cold water, and then splashed it on my face for several minutes. Then I collapsed to the metal floor, crying as I trembled with fear. I pulled myself back up and looked in the mirror, and saw my face. It was the same as it always was, only just my cheeks and eyes were flushed red from more crying.

A second later the hatch opened and my guard, the one who spoke perfect English, came inside. "Miss," he asked me, "Miss, are you alright?" I just looked at him, still dressed in just a t-shirt and panties, and then suddenly felt faint and I dropped to my knees. He caught me before I made it to the floor as I blacked out.

Several hours later I woke up in what I guessed was yet another hospital bed. Sitting next to me in his motorized wheelchair was Chairman Keel, staring at me until I finally came completely awake.

"Are you alright, Pilot Forrestal," he asked me. Before answering I reflexively felt my face, just to make sure that it was still there. I didn't say anything at first, and Keel waited until I could finally speak a couple of minutes later.

"What happened to you?"

"Just…just some sort of nightmare. About being in the EVA," I told him, "I felt like my face was burning off."

"Really," said Keel. "What else did you see?"

I told the Chairman about the rest of the two nightmares, including the parts about the "fish tank" of bodies and also the EVA being in combat and then the burning. My body shivered as I recalled the whole night, the terrors still fresh in my mind. Keel didn't have any immediate reaction at first, except to say that the experience was "Interesting." He then called Krupp into the hospital room, and the woman promptly reported in.

"Please keep more careful care of Miss Forrestal here, she is very important to us," Keel instructed Krupp, and Krupp immediately nodded in reply. Keel then turned back to me.

"Miss Forrestal, if you have any dreams or nightmares of the sort you just had, please inform Ms. Krupp immediately. It's important that we know."

"Why?" I asked. "They're just dreams, right?"

"It's quite possible that the reason why you fell into a coma earlier might come from some sort of neuropsycho reactions with the EVA," Keel explained, "and knowing how these dreams of yours are laid out are key to making sure that such an instance doesn't repeat again the next time you come into contact with the Evangelion."

"I see."

"Did you have dreams like this before your accident with Unit 04?"

"Not nightmares like this, but I did have these re-occuring dreams about living in the mountains in some log cabin. Those were kind of strange."

Keel's attention was piqued. "Strange? In what way?"

"It felt like I was living inside of some one else's head. Some boy."

"How long was that for?"

"I don't know, I think they went on for months. Was it something to do with the EVA?"

"Perhaps. In any case, the doctors here inform me that you are physically healthy. When these dreams happen again and I suspect that they soon will, please don't forget to notify Krupp here as soon as they occur. Don't wait until the morning."

"Alright," I agreed, somewhat perplexed as to what was going on with me.

* * *

The weird dreams stopped for a while after that and once I was able to sleep at night without being anxious things began to slowly improve. While each day of physical training was more strenuous than the last, I could feel that my muscles were transforming from near-atrophy to having at least some kind of strength. Still, the constant activity was hard to endure, as I was subjected to hours on end of weights, treadmill, and other types of exercises, some of which used weight equipment that I bet they took from middle age dungeons.

The pace of training was frantic enough that there wasn't much time to think of anything else, as every day was a blend of eat/exercise/rest(a little)/exercise/sleep, and the power couple of Krupp and Hotchkiss weren't exactly charismatic either. I suppose that was good, as I really didn't want to think about anything else.

Those times that I did were whenever I made it back to my cabin, exhausted. Usually it hit me in the shower, perhaps the only real time I was with myself the whole day, when thoughts went back to the wonderful way things were, when Dad, and Vance and everyone else was alive. Now it was only just me. It was going to be up to me to avenge all of them. I could still feel the tears on my face intermixed with the shower drops, with time it was becoming more numb but it was still painful.

Within two weeks I had regained enough strength to start running up the stairs instead of taking the elevators in the fortress, and that made me feel better. I was strong again and working to get stronger, but still unsure of what path lay ahead as I lived in this still and very cold place.

On one night I dreamed again, but this time it was the return of my boy in the mountains. I saw the forest cabin he lived in and it seemed different than before, it was larger and built up on a mountain ledge. Also, very noticeably there was snow all around, and it was everywhere. It was beautiful! It was the first genuinely nice thing that had happened to me since I had woken up from my coma.

I could see him playing in the snow and this time he had some friends over, there were a couple of other kids I didn't recognize. The images were still a bit blurry so I couldn't make out anyone's face but I could hear playful screams and laughter. There was something else too, some sort of small animal but I couldn't make it out. I was surfing around in the snow, but then suddenly I saw her. She was standing next to me and saying something, and then was playing with the rest of us.

It was the same girl from my earlier nightmare, the one with the fish tank full of body parts. Blue hair, red eyes, and pale white skin. She was in my dream. What the heck was she doing in here? Scared of what I saw I squealed and woke up.

There again I was on my bed. Almost immediately Krupp's voice came through the speaker on my intercom. "Pilot Forrestal?" she asked me. "Are you alright?"

Were they watching me sleep? I turned on the light and replied back "I'm okay, I think."

"Did you have another nightmare?"

"Um, just a dream, not really scary like the others."

"Get dressed, we will come and get you."

I guess I never took dreams seriously much but for some reason these people did, and within a minute the hatch to my room opened up. The older guard, the one who spoke good English, appeared in the doorway.

"Please, Miss Erin, this way."

I followed him towards the end of the hallway and into something that looked like a break room, with just a table and some chairs and a small fridge against the wall. Krupp was already there with a notebook and a tape recorder on the table. "Now Pilot Forrestal," she commanded, "sit down and recall your recent dream in its entirety."

I did as Krupp instructed, and told her everything that I could remember in detail, which wasn't much. I told her that this dream felt like the others I used to have back at Second Branch, when I'd dream I was that boy in the mountains. Krupp seemed keenly interested in the dream and pushed me aggressively for details.

"How many people did you see?"

"Um, maybe three others."

"Children or adults?"

"All kids, I'm pretty sure."

"Can you describe them?"

I scratched my head and tried to give as much of a description as I could. "I couldn't see faces very well, but one was a boy, kind of small with dark hair. One was a girl with really bright, red hair. And then there was this other girl with the blue hair and red eyes, she's the same girl from my nightmare two week ago."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm pretty positive about that, she's hard to forget. Also, there was like this animal kind of thing walking around."

Krupp's eyebrows shot up. "What kind? Like a bird?"

"Sort of like that, only it didn't fly. It was like this really ugly penguin." Krupp then interrupted me and grabbed a phone, and spoke with someone else in German that I couldn't understand. After listening to the other side of the phone she turned back to me.

"I need to know one more thing about your dream."

"What about it?"

"Where were you?"

"I told you, we were in the mountains at the cabin."

"No, which mountain?"

"How would I know?" I protested. "I have no idea where this is. It's just a dream that keeps popping into my head."

"I need to know what your surroundings look like, it's very important."

"Why? It's just a dream, right?"

"Yes, but….but in order to determine a cause to your difficulties with the Evangelion we need to determine where in your subconscious are you being forced to react to stimuli. Perhaps it was a…past memory or something you saw on television or something."

That didn't seem to make any sense to me at all. "I told you, I don't think this place exists. It's just in my head."

"That I doubt, Pilot Forrestal. Please tell me the physical surroundings of where you were. Did you see any landmarks, unusual buildings or the sort like that. Signs, road posts, anything."

"Well, there's no roads, and not even any buildings other than that cabin."

"What about the mountain? Anything unusual about the mountain you were on?" I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, if only to get Miss Krupp here off my back. "There was one big mountain in the background."

"What did it look like? Can you draw a picture?" She shoved over her notebook to me along with a pencil. Trying to recall anything that I could from the fuzziness of the dream, I drew here a very crude picture of the larger mountain that I thought I saw in the distance.

"It was like this," I explained, as I showed her my quickly sketched images of a conical mountain with a crown of white snow. The one thing unusual about the mountain was that it was pretty smooth on all sides, almost perfectly.

Krupp saw the drawing and was immediately shocked. "Was this like Mount Fuji?" she asked me.

"Sort of." In my grogginess from being woken up I wasn't sure of anything that I was doing but it did sort of look like how I thought Fuji was supposed to be, basically a volcano cone capped with snow at the top.

"Was it to the left or right of the cabin?" she asked me.

"How would I know?"

Krupp practically screamed her response. "Please, it's very important!"

"Um…left, maybe?" Krupp then made a note on her notebook, and then motioned to the door for the guard. She then told me "thank you very much, Pilot Forrestal. You've been of great assistance." I was then hustled out of the door and back to my room, still wondering what the heck was that all about.

* * *

From then on the dreams became even more strange. A couple of nights later I saw her again, the little girl with blue hair. We were walking together in some sort of city, and she was wearing a dress of blue and white. It was nighttime and I could see the glare of city lights all around us with the moon high above. It went on like that for a while as we walked around. She didn't say very much, and in fact she didn't talk much at all in these dreams.

The dream moved to some other place that I couldn't identify but it was indoors where ever it was. She stood in front of me and she was close enough to see her clearly this time. Short-cropped blue hair tied back with a big bow, her face made up and with red lipstick that matched her eye color. She looked up at me, her eyes seemed nervous.

I felt myself put my arms at her sides and hold her close, and then I took one hand and touched her face. She touched my hand, and then I kissed her.

Oh, shit.

I woke up right away. Oh God, did that feel weird! I could feel her lips, how soft they were. It was a powerful sensation that left me really confused.

Terrific, I thought to myself, after everything else now I'm turning into a lesbian too. That's what this is all about, there's some sort of weird subconscious thing where the blue-haired girl represents all of my innermost desires. Except that wasn't even true.

There was someone that I wanted to kiss that night, and I remembered his lips well. I tried to recall it, in order to purge out the dream that I just had. I remember how he held me in his arms and how we passionately kissed while sprawled out on the floor of the pilot's ready room back at Second Branch.

Oh God, Vance. Why? Why did you have to go? I need you now! Right now! The memory of his strong face and easy smile came to me and I just wanted him to keep me warm in this cold place, I'd trade anything in the world for it. But it was hopeless. He was gone, dead, and I would never ever hold him in my arms again.

I squeezed my pillow as hard as I could and plunged my head into it, crying yet one more time. This whole thing just sucked so much.

* * *

 _This segment focuses on those funny dreams Erin keeps having, and we get our first real glimpse of a regular EVA cast member. We have a bit more go to at SEELE-2 until we shift gears, so stay tuned._

 _On a completely different topic if you've been reading any of the Blue Rose stories, you've no doubt realized that there's a rather large number of original characters in the series. For fanfics this is, sadly, controversial as many avid fanfic readers do tend to avoid stories with OCs. Yet in Blue Rose, the use of OCs is integral to the story itself. Why is this?_

 _In earlier comments I've mentioned that I started out writing fanfics as a sort of "training ground" for novel writing, and early on determined that to get proper well-rounded education on creating novels that I needed to not limit myself too tightly to the confines of any one particular story universe. That meant introducing new characters and settings as the story required. Of course, OC's in FanFiction have a generally bad reputation, mostly because many of them either represent "author viewpoint" or what's more commonly known as "self-insert" or they tend to be of the Mary Sue variety and as such many OCs tend to be terrible, enough to where avid FanFic readers swerve to avoid when seeing "OC" within a story description._

 _So with that I had my work cut out for me early on in formulating Blue Rose. The trick had to be making characters that were A_ _) believable and compatible within the existing EVA universe and B) not so perfect or single-dimensional as to annoy the reader. Having an OC in a relationship with Rei Ayanami certainly was a tall order and a lot of thought and research went into working out who Patrick Forrestal even was well before this got written._

 _In a later posting I'll get into how I did the specific OC designs in Blue Rose as I think readers would find it interesting, but generally I found it best to set ground rules even before I started plotting, and then tweaked from there. Those rules were:_

 _1) Original characters should have a "profile" that makes them immediately recognizable as distinct from the main EVA cast, both visually and personality-wise._

 _2) Original characters should be built with personality defects from the beginning, in complete parallel with the pilots and others within EVA. In other words, I started with their weaknesses first, and then built on their strengths._

 _3) Original characters should be able to "change" within the storyline just as the main EVA cast changes, and that those changes will be both good and bad._

 _4) Finally, OCs CANNOT steal the show from the main EVA cast without a damn good reason._

 _More on this with the next chapter._


	10. Final Warning

After one month of training I was finally released from daily workouts with Krupp and Hotchkiss, and was taken to see Chairman Keel. We walked through different parts of the fortress on our way to see him, and now that I had been here a while I got a better perspective for just how huge this place was. Just think about hollowing out a mountain and then putting a city the size of Second Branch, maybe five thousand people or more, inside, along with not only armies and airplanes and such, but also several Evangelions. If I got a chance I definitely wanted to see more of my surroundings.

The Chairman met me in a larger office that was richly appointed, with leather couches and keepsakes on shelves that looked like ancient treasures taken from all around the world. It seemed to me more like a small museum than an office. For this meeting I finally got something that resembled real clothes, with a turtleneck sweater and black slacks along with nicer leather lace-up boots, and a warm green-colored parka that I have to admit was comfy. I was getting used to having my hair long too, and now normally did it up as bun to keep it neat during the daytime. I thought about cutting it but it had felt very dry and damaged when I first woke up and I thought growing it out a bit more might help its condition.

Keel greeted me as I walked in, accompanied by several of his top officers along with Piotr, who was his manservant. Piotr was this really thin and kind of creepy-looking guy who would push the Chairman's wheel chair at times and see to his needs. Krupp had come with me for the visit and she stood alongside as Piotr moved the Chairman closer to me.

"How are you, Miss Forrestal?" he asked me with unusual warmth in his voice.

"I'm fine, Grandfather."

"You look much better now than you did when you came her," he said to me and I blushed a little.

"I feel a bit better, thanks."

"Please sit down, we have much to discuss."

I sat down at a conference table while Keel was parked alongside and closer to me. Krupp stayed for the meeting, while all of the others except for Piotr were sent outside.

"Have you been enjoying your stay here?"

"Well," I said honestly, "I wouldn't say I enjoyed it but I think I'm better off for it."

"We were quite concerned with your health both physically and mentally, but it seems that you've made considerable progress. I believe now that we are in a position to move onto the next phase." Keel then motioned to a video monitor on the wall of his office.

"Currently the so-called Alliance who runs the Tokyo-3 Geofront has six operational Evangelion units, and is working on getting a seventh," Keel told me. "If they can achieve that level of power, we are afraid that nothing in the world could stop them." I nodded, knowing the danger that the Alliance put the Earth in.

"We have, however, managed to get some of more skilled agents inside of their operation and now believe we have a unique opportunity to do to them what they once did to us. That is, strike at them from within." I nodded along, now knowing the real reasons why I was brought here.

"Our spies have also discovered that the Alliance is actively searching for you, Miss Forrestal, in the belief that you could serve as one of their pilots as they already have Unit 04. Of course, they have a pilot for that unit but perhaps they are having some difficulty using him that requires the original pilot."

"So the fake pilot's not working out then?"

"It would seem so," Keel told me. "Therefore I believe if you were to suddenly become available, the Alliance would take you into their operation out of necessity in short order."

"Wait," I asked. "You want _me_ to sneak in there?"

"Precisely," said Keel. "You will infiltrate their stronghold and re-unite with your own Evangelion unit, you will then attack them from within when they least suspect it, and then you will escape and make your way back here to our base. Then with our own rebuilt Evangelion force we will be able to take care of the Alliance and NERV once and for all, and restore peace and order to the world."

Finally, I was being given something to do that could give my life some meaning. All up until this moment all I could do since waking up was just feel sorry for myself, but now I could do something about it. I could avenge Dad, and Vance, and everyone else. I could get my EVA back, and I could set things right.

"Sign me up," I told Keel, feeling confident for the first time in a long time.

* * *

For the next two weeks I was put through intensive preparation for my mission. While I was still given physical training, it wasn't nearly like it was before and was now limited to maybe an hour a day instead of eight. Instead I was paired with several new instructors and given what amounted to acting lessons, as to infiltrate NERV I would need to play the part of myself, but it would be the me that just woke up over a month ago, the me that didn't know anything about what had happened. In addition they also started me on an Evangelion simulator, as once reunited with my EVA I would need to pilot, take on enemy units right away, and then escape back to the fortress.

As part of my training I was given information about NERV and about my opponents. Dad never really told us much about the Japan-based NERV, other than they were our chief rival while we were building Units 03 and 04. I knew enough to know that he didn't like them at all, and it had a lot of do with how mom died.

It was when I started learning about the pilots of the NERV program that I became a bit suspicious, as perhaps for the first time I was not sure of what really I had gotten involved in. Like Vance and I, the pilots of NERV's EVAs were all teenaged kids. Some were from Japan and others from Europe, and then of course the boy who called himself Patrick, my so-called twin, was from the USA (if even that was true). But one of NERV's pilots I had clearly seen before.

While looking at my mission briefing book I saw her photo and clearly recognized her. With short-cropped blue hair and uniquely bright red eyes, there's no way I wouldn't have missed this girl. The name on the record was listed as Rei Ayanami, known as the First Child. The original Evangelion pilot, the first of them to successfully sync with an EVA unit. She was now one of the pilots on the side of the Alliance, but I knew her because she was the girl from my dreams.

The short-haired blue girl who looked out on the ocean, the one who stood in front of the tank filled with body parts, the one that I dreamed about kissing, it was her. It was always her.

Why was she in my dreams, and nightmares for that matter? I had never seen her before, so why would I dream about her? The whole thing became rather unsettling for me. But, I told myself, I couldn't let it distract me to the mission I now had. I wasn't the old me anymore, Princess Erin of Second Branch. That little girl was dead, and now I was just Pilot Forrestal and a pilot wasn't worth anything without her unit.

* * *

In preparing myself I did my own workouts in addition to the physical training session I had each day, and after extensively stretching in my cabin I usually went out and ran for about an hour. It was all I could do really, and the fortress was huge so I figured this would be a good way to explore my surroundings more.

Krupp had told me to keep my movements restricted to the area where my cabin was, which was a residential block of some sort although I never saw anyone else who lived here. Was I the only one? Could be. But after the second day I disregarded her orders and decided to go and look around on the pretense of needing more space to run. It was only then when I got a better view of where I was.

The fortress felt like a battleship or aircraft carrier inside, with multiple decks of cabins and other compartments. Some of this was for soldiers to sleep or train in, and on further exploration I found out there were hundreds of them here, to guard the fortress from anyone who'd want to try and attack. They also manned all of these defenses such as guns and missiles that the mountain was bristling with.

There were other places that were more to do with SEELE's operations, such as some sort of headquarters higher up in the mountain. That area was well guarded and I tried to stay away from there as it wasn't easy to jog though with all the security. I also discovered that far down below us were all sorts of caverns that were created by lava flows, and that the heat from below the mountain was from a still-active volcanic lava flow. Basically this wasn't just a mountain but a volcano too, and it was the heat from the volcano that gave much of the base it's power.

Everything around me had signs printed in German, Russian, Chinese, and English, and the German writing was the oldest. When I asked Krupp where this place was she wouldn't tell me but I'm not entirely dumb, and knew enough to figure out we were in Europe. If we could get here directly by submarine that meant we were by the ocean, and if it was really cold then we had to be high up closer to the Arctic. That left not too much of the world remaining, and I worked out mentally that we were either in Iceland, or then maybe Scandinavia or the very north of Russia. Somewhere where the mountains met the ocean. Norway maybe?

One particular day I made my jogging run towards the lower decks. Like I usually did I had on a green fleece running suit along with runners, with both a t-shirt and sweater underneath, because in some parts of the fortress it really was that cold. My hair was tied up in a bun again, as that's how I had become used to wearing it (and having long hair wasn't all that bad once I got into the habit of brushing it daily) The reason why I pushed this further downward today was because I wanted to see the EVA cages again, having heard whispers about there being more of the Mass Production Series being assembled.

After running down several flights of stairs I reached the larger chamber where the EVAs were held. This was a giant place, stretching for hundreds of yards in either direction, and laced with steel and concrete all around. Going from both to the left and right of me I could see them nestled within their pens, each cage containing a white muscular giant within. Unlike the last time I was here, there were more of the Mass Production series, at least ten that I could count, and they were all now at full size as each one of them stood up past a hundred feet or more.

I jogged down a steel gangway as I made a run to pass the giants, figuring that this would give me a good run and also satisfy my own curiosity to see what else was around me. Krupp was having me watched, I was sure, but for the moment didn't decide to rein me in so I just pressed on.

From the gangway I could get a good look at each of the giants, and you could see the strength of each one from the bounding muscles on the units. Some looked like they were just barely restrained as they twitched and jerked while inside of the cages, while others looked more like they were in repose. With no eyes it was hard to tell who was active and who was not but it felt like most or all of them were alive in some way, they had that kind of quivering movement to them as you passed by and it was a weird feeling. One of them turned their head towards me as I jogged past and I wondered if he wasn't looking at me. Good thing these guys don't seem to eat, I'd hate to end up a snack for any one of them with that giant mouth full of teeth.

Towards the end of the cage pens there stood one other Evangelion unit that didn't at all look like the others. It wasn't white but instead was dark grey and black, and had a regular helmet with a normal-sized head. Also, unlike the other units it wasn't twitching with activity, but instead stood stoically quiet inside of its own cage. As I ran closer I could see the insignia on its left arm as it faced me: Evangelion Unit 06.

At a closer look Unit 06 appeared a lot like Unit 04 did, with more proportional body limbs than the Mass Production EVAs. To me it seemed more "normal" like my own EVA, and then that got me wondering if there was a pilot to go with the unit. Sure enough there was, and he was standing right in front of the cage as I approached.

Poised in front of the cage railing on the gangway was a thin, sort of lanky boy that looked about my age. He had very pale skin and unusual white- grey hair, and he wore the black and blue plugsuit which I guessed was the standard SEELE suit. Earlier as I was fitted for a new plug suit the SEELE technical staff had suggested I wear the same colors, basically dark blue with black trims and I actually sort of insisted on my own colors of orange with black. I could give up a lot of things for this, but not my suit pattern.

Anyway the boy was just leaning against the railing looking up at his unit. Given that I finally found someone here that was at least my same age, I decided to see if he'd talk to me. So I then slowed down to a walk and came up to where he was standing.

As I got closer the boy turned his head towards me. He had a very fair face, slightly Asian and slender in appearance like the rest of him. To me he seemed rather handsome, in a soft sort of way. His height was just a few inches taller than me. What got me was his eyes as his pupils were bright red, the same shade of red that looked like the blue-haired girl in my all-too-frequent dreams. Also, and maybe it was just how he looked at me as I came towards him, but I got this very strange vibe from him but I couldn't describe it more than just to say that it felt queasy to be in his presence, almost alien.

Despite the way I felt I still approached him, figuring that at least I had a chance of making a friend here. "Hi!" I greeted in English as I got within a few feet of him. The boy didn't say anything back however, and then just ignored me and went back to looking at his EVA.

Maybe he didn't speak English, so I tried again, in Russian. Having Russian coaches for gymnastics ended up being more useful than I'd imagined as at least I picked up enough of the language in the years to use it in small talk. "Hello" I again greeted. "Are you a pilot?"

The boy looked at me again, seeing that I wasn't going to just go ignoring him. He still didn't reply back to me, and instead just stared at me.

Geez, are there any normal boys around that I can find? I greeted him again once more, this time going slowly. "Hello," I said in carefully pronounced Russian, "My name's Erin, Erin Forrestal. Do you understand me?"

"I understood you the first time," the boy spoke back in perfect, unaccented English. "I just didn't want to talk to you then."

Well, you're a prick. "You know," I said in English with a little laugh, "you're the only other pilot I've seen since I've been here. You might want to at least make a friend, yeah?" But silver-haired boy didn't say anything in return and just kept studying me instead.

"Look, anyway," I kept going, "at least let me know your name."

He just gazed off into the distance, seemingly indifferent to my request. If this guy was going to be too good to even talk to me I figured he wasn't worth wasting my time and decided to shuffle off. But only then as I was about to get going did he reply back. "They've given me the name of Kaworu," he said.

"Oh. But, is that your real name?"

"No."

I'm sensing a pattern here. "I don't suppose you'd want to tell me what your real name was, would you?"

"There's no need for the Lillim to know it," he flatly replied.

"What are the _Lillim_?"

"You see, girl," the silver-haired boy said, "how ignorant you are of the realities of the world you live in. That's why you don't need to know."

"I'm not ignorant," I retorted back. "I know how bad things can get in life, believe me."

Instead of answering me he peered at me a little more, as if he was examining me in a petri dish or some sort of experiment. "How peculiar."

"What's that?"

"You're split in half," he said to me, "yet you're not even aware of it."

"I'm _what?_ "

The boy stepped up to me closer, and I could feel that creepy vibe over me just grow as my skin started to stand on edge. I became afraid and I didn't quite understand why.

"There's a whole other part of you that's somewhere else," he told me, "but you have absolutely no idea at all. How pathetic."

Fine then. "Okay," I said to Creepy Boy, "You know what? I'm done here. Have a nice life." With that I maneuvered away from the silver-haired kid, who gave me this sort of smirk as I moved to the center of the gangway to get back to jogging. Not wanting to really have anything else to do with this person, I just picked up my pace and moved down the gangway as far away as I could. "Weird," I muttered to myself. I have the worst luck in the world, every time I meet a boy my age it's always something problematic. No wonder I have dreams about kissing girls at night.

As I got back to running and the steel gangway that led me through the EVA cages led to another hatch and then through another compartment of the fortress interior, my mind shifted back to those dreams I kept having. In the month or more that I'd been here in the fortress recovering from my long sleep and then getting my strength back I hoped that my nightmares and other dreams would start to fade away as my confidence returned. I found however that instead they were getting more frequent, and growing stronger with each night.

The dreams I now had were of two kinds. One kind were dreams about piloting EVA, where I saw myself in the entry plug and usually engaged in some sort of battle. Those were infrequent but often heart pounding, it felt like life-and-death as I did battle against all sorts of enemies, including some that looked like the white mass production EVAs. The more frequent dreams however all included the blue-haired, red-eyed girl and as the dreams went on they were all pretty romantic as they come. It felt like I was living scenes from those old romance novels I used to just tear through while growing up at Second Branch. There was one particular one where I saw here in what looked like some sort of pastoral garden, with sculptures and courtyards and pretty flowers and pools of water, and there she was wearing a beautiful blue dress and we'd sit by the water and hold each other and…well, I tried not to think about the rest.

This really began to bother me and I realized there had to be something more to the whole thing. I remember that Dad was worried enough about these dreams to give me medication right before my accident, and then that got me thinking about just what happened that day, the day I fell into a coma and dropped out of existence.

There was something in the entry plug, something frightening. At this point I could just barely remember what happened, but like a shadow or a spectre, light and dark. It was something that appeared really creepy, and then it spoke to me. What did it say?

Turning the corner as I jogged down into another, darker passage of the fortress I tried hard to focus on what happened that time. Why was I so frightened? What was that thing? I had never told the others at SEELE about it as I didn't want them to think I was crazy and then I wouldn't be given the chance to get my Unit 04 back, and that was nearly all I wanted right now. That, and settle the score with that terrible boy who had messed up my life.

"Find" something, it said. At least I think it said, it came out so garbled. But what?

As I kept moving through the fortress my pace quickened, I wasn't now just jogging but rather running. I felt something about the dreams, something important, like how they were all linked together in some way.

The one thing that got me about all of them was that I experienced everything myself. I mean, it was like me in my own viewpoint, I wasn't just standing by and watching myself. When I was really little I used to have dreams like that, where it would be like I'd be standing on the ground and I'd see myself clutching a string of balloons, and then watch myself float way into the distance. That was scary, but all of these dreams were in solid, living color, like I was really there.

Back at Second Branch I kept having dreams about the boy, the one in the cabin. I knew it was a boy because I could just feel it, I could even hear his voice at times, and there was one time when I might have even seen him like in a mirror but it was so foggy that I just couldn't be sure of everything.

Then when I came back the blue-haired girl showed up. She was in a few dreams including that really frightening one with the tank full of body parts. I still got the chilly-willies from thinking of that. There were also dreams of being in EVA, of piloting and sometimes of really horrible things happening like my face melting off.

But then I was back to the cabin and with my boy in the mountains and suddenly the blue-haired girl was there too, playing in the snow with him and the weird penguin. The cabin had only shown up one more time, but since that point she basically had never gone away.

All of the dreams were from my own perspective. But here I was basically with this other girl. Why would I think that? Was I really that gay?

Or is this all the boy?

That startled me enough to get me to slow down my pace, and I just barely noticed that where I was now was dark and damp, somewhere deep within the interior of the mountain. Passing by a couple of uniformed technicians as I jogged down another dark passageway I kept up my train of thought, as I felt like I was on the verge of a breakthrough.

I always felt the old dreams, the boy in the mountains, were from his own perspective. Now I was having lots of those, again all from the boy's point of view. Naturally most boys like girls, right? So here's this really, sort of beautiful but strange looking girl in front of me and all I want to do is make out with her. Natural, right? If I'm the boy.

So are they all the same? If so, I've been having these since last year, since even before my accident. What the heck?

I slowed myself down to just walking and then wondered around trying to figure out what else was missing from all of this. I started to see the blue-haired girl the day I got here at the fortress, but yet I didn't see the photos of the other NERV pilots until much later. But yet I knew she was the same as the real-life girl, the one called Rei, I just knew it from those distinctive red eyes. How did she show up in the dreams before I knew who she was?

Pushing back though really hazy memories, I tried to build a timeline in my brain about when all of this started. It all started…when I started piloting. My first dream came the first day I got an activation on Unit 04. And then they haven't stopped since.

So then who was that boy?

He was in my head, he was living in my head. And then suddenly he was piloting EVA, and with this girl who really existed and was not something just in my imagination, yet someone I'd never met before. How could that even happen?

A sudden, horrible thought came over me at that moment, something that shook me down to my core. Maybe this boy was real. And maybe this boy was the one who had taken my unit, and then did something horrible to all of those people in Second Branch.

If that was true then he was the one who had killed Vance, and Dad, and everyone else. And now he was in my head every night.

How he could do it I had no idea, but it chilled me to think it might be the same person who came up with all of this stuff and then pumped it into my dreams. It wasn't enough that everyone else had to die, he had to come after me too.

But then why the girl? She was important to the whole thing somehow, I just didn't quite know how. I was so confused now, and terribly hurt. If this boy, the same one I once so innocently thought of early on as some sort of a romantic notion was actually the one who had killed all of those people, I couldn't stand the thought of him being in my head now. I just wanted to be left alone!

I didn't want to think about any of this any longer. My whole reality was devastating enough without the idea that someone was actually capable of entering my private dreams at night. Maybe I just made all of this stuff up to scare myself, or it was some really strange case of déjà vu. Either way I was becoming tired and stressed, and decided to turn myself back to my cabin. My training was still ongoing, and my mission of vengeance was coming up, and then I could settle the scores with everyone that had hurt me.

Looking upwards I tried to figure out where I had ended up. Somehow I was in a dark corner of the fortress basement that was poorly lit and smelt badly. I wondered where I even was and how I'd get back to my quarters. Searching for a sign, I turned and round and then suddenly jumped backwards. There was a man in a uniform standing right in front of me.

"Hello, young girl!" he said in Russian. "So nice of you to come here to entertain us down in the bowels of this mountain."

Panicked, I looked around and saw a second man, like the first dressed in a SEELE security guards' uniform and armed with a pistol. I realized immediately that I was in a lot of trouble, and really hoped that Ms Krupp was actually keeping tabs on me this time.

"Um…" I said to the two men, "you know, I'm just gonna go and get back to where I came from."

"Not so fast," the first man said, and he grabbed hold of me by the wrist. That was it I decided and immediately I shoved an elbow into his ribs, then followed by pushing under his waist and lifting him up and over me in a judo throw. It was bad form on my part but still enough to knock him off his feet and put him on the floor.

I tried running for the passageway behind me as the other man tried to intercept me. Again, he tried to grab me by the wrist but this time I took both hands and then swung my shoulder towards him and then pushed against his own body weight to flip him off his feet and onto the floor. With both creeps down on the ground I bolted for the passageway and ran as fast as I could out down the corridor.

Unfortunately there were more than two of them, and as I ran I bumped into a third man, he was large and sort of Asian-looking while the other two were more Caucasian. This one again took me by both of my wrists and then pushed me against the wall. Squirming to get out of his grip, I tried to swing myself underneath but it wasn't any use, as he used brute strength to pin me to the wall of the corridor. I fought hard to get free but I it was no use, as he fixed me tight.

As I struggled to get free the two other men who I originally knocked down and evaded moved to either side of me, the first one of them now looking down at my terrified face. "Well, little girl, it was so good of the Chairman to think of us toiling down here so hard on his behalf," he told me with a toothy smile, "that he sends you down here to us."

"What…what are you going to do?" I asked him, knowing the answer already.

"We are going to…show you our hospitality," he told me, moving his hand to caress my cheek. I tried to put up as brave of a face as I could. "You better not touch me," I said to him. "I'm pretty important!"

"So are we, my little dear, so are we," the man said as he traced his finger around the shape of my face, "and now it's time to give us our due." With that he started to take off his jacket and, frightened as I was, just closed my eyes and prayed to God that something, somehow would happen to get me out of this. But my present situation felt horribly hopeless, and my heart sank as low as when I first found out that Dad had been killed.

The man took his hand and then pushed my head back against the wall and I tried to scream, managing to get out at least a few seconds before they shoved a cloth into my mouth. Then he took both hands and ripped open my warm-up suit jacket, and then my sweater, exposing my t-shirt. My breathing was hard and I was trying anything that I could to get away, but with two guys over twice my size holding me down it was impossible. I looked at the man in front of me and saw his dark eyes bulging with emotion and I swallowed hard.

"Don't worry, little girl, you're going to enjoy this nearly as much as I am," he said in a faint voice. "So just lie back and don't fight it."

I tried to shout further but the wad of cloth in my mouth was huge and I couldn't get anything out that muffled screams. I did however manage to free up one of my legs and gave the ringleader a good kick in the thigh. Incensed, the man raised his right hand to slap me. I closed my eyes, dreading what would happen next, and then I heard a sudden noise that sounded like a loud electric shock.

Opening my eyes to see what it was, I watched my assaulter suddenly jerk with energy as sparks came from his behind his neck. Then came another voice, this time older. "It's not very manly to hit little girls," the voice said. My attacker's body then crumpled downward towards the ground.

The big Asian let go of me and swiveled towards my unknown savior. He tried to take a swing at him but instead he was quickly blocked and then kicked hard in the shins. The big man screamed in pain, but before he could do anything else he was punched in the gut and he too crumpled to the floor.

The last one, the one man that still had hold of my arm, attempted to swing me in front of him and brought out his pistol, hoping to use me as a shield to get out of the situation he was now in. My rescuer moved quickly however, and raising a pistol of his own put a bullet in the man's head. I could feel splatter against my face as the he too went down.

My body shook uncontrollably. I had never seen a man die before and now one just had his head blown in two inches away from me. I leaned against the wall and slid downward, locking up in cold shock. The shadow who had saved me from the other man came out into the dim lights of the hallway and I could see him now. It was the guard who Ms. Krupp put outside of my cabin, the middle-aged man who spoke perfect American English. Gently he crouched downward to see how I was.

"Are you okay, Miss Forrestal?" he asked. I couldn't say anything at first but just remained there on the floor trembling uncontrollably. When I did try to say something I realized there was still something in my mouth and I pulled the cloth out, nearly gagging as I did so.

"Let's get you out of here," the man told me. He then gently pulled upwards to get me on my feet. I found that I was shaking so bad that I couldn't manage to walk, so he then leaned over and carried me on his back to bring me out of the corridor and into better-lit areas.

I remained like that for a while, as he carried me like a little kid tired from too much playtime. After maybe twenty minutes or more, I wasn't quite sure, I was brought back to the upper decks of the fortress and closer to my own cabin. He then gently let me down and helped me to walk the rest of the way to my own cabin, instead of taking me to the medical center.

Silently he opened the cabin hatch and led me inside. I reflexively sat down on the bed as he closed the doorway and then proceeded to the tiny bathroom I had, taking wet towels and then returning to where I sat. The man then gently cleaned up my face as I sat there, and then he gave me a cup of hot tea to try and help me calm down. He also put a blanked around my shoulders to try and get me warm. Finally I got past most of the shakes I had, enough to be able to at least talk.

"T-thank you," I told him.

"It's nothing, miss," he said to me, "just doing my job." The man then looked at me directly, "What were you doing down there, anyway?"

"Just…sort of exploring," I told him, "I wanted to know more about where I was."

"Well, you need to be more careful and not stray too far. Nearly everything about this place is dangerous." I didn't reply but just nodded instead, having learned the lesson the hard way.

As I settled down I noticed that the guard looked at me curiously, as if he was searching for something. "What…what is it?"

"Oh, it's nothing," he told me. "You just remind me of someone I knew once. Someone very dear to me."

I think in all of the time I was here at the SEELE fortress this was the most anyone had ever opened up to me, such was the regimented and cold attitude of nearly everyone here. For a bit I dropped my guard as well. "What's your name?"

"Victor."

"Victor who?"

"Just 'Victor' miss. That's all you need to know for right now."

"Okay, then."

"Anyway, they'll be needing me to report in on this. Do you think you'll be alright now?" I nodded again, thankful that at least I had one guardian angel in my life.

"Do yourself a favor and if you go out and exploring again try to go to the upper levels. There's an observation deck there where you can see the mountain range where we're at."

"Where are we, anyway?"

Victor was at first reluctant, then decided to tell me more than anyone else here ever did. "This place is called Stetland, it's in Norway, It's a hollowed out mountain that used to be a Nazi stronghold."

I knew it. "Really?"  
"Yes, it's kind of a long story. Anyway be sure you keep that to yourself, SEELE doesn't want you know to more than that?"

"Why not?"

"In case you get captured you can't give away where you were," he said. "I've got to go, but please take care of yourself, miss."

"I will," I said to him, giving him the best smile I could. It was then that I realized that I hadn't actually smiled at anyone for weeks, if not months. Victor didn't smile back but instead just nodded at me curtly and then went back out the hatch, shutting it tight.

* * *

I managed to put behind me the harrowing incident in the lower levels and focused on preparing for the mission ahead, and within a few more days of intensive training I was deemed good and ready to go into the lion's den of Tokyo-3. Just before my departure I had more meeting with Chairman Kiel, as I was walking alongside him while his manservant Piotr guided his wheelchair along one of the corridors close to SEELE HQ.

"Pilot Forrestal, they have told me you have made significant progress in your training."

"Yes, Grandfather." As I spoke to him I ran my fingers through my now much shorter hair, as they had nearly cut everything to give me a sort of "boy crew."

"Do you feel ready to embark on this most important mission?"

"I do," I replied with newfound confidence in my voice. I had survived all that had happened to me, and was regaining my strength by the day. "I'm ready to get my EVA back."

"Very well." Kiel lifted a finger as he spoke to me further. "You must never give them any indication that you have spent any amount of time with us," he instructed. "Once they find you it should be as when we first found you, and everything that you know must be unfolded to you again as for the first time."

"I understand."

"Your reactions must be convincing for them to accept you. But keep deep within your heart your true purpose, and wait patiently for the right time to strike. Others are already hidden within their underground fortress and will assist you in this endeavor, so you will not be alone."

"That's good."

"Know that you will be tested, and tested perhaps harshly or with clever tricks or deception. But don't let them deceive you, as you know the truth. Let it give you purpose." I nodded in agreement. I knew perfectly well why I was doing this: the deaths of my father, of Vance, and all of those other innocent people at NERV-2 were about to be avenged.

"Then when the time comes and you and the EVA are reunited, strike at them hard, and without mercy! You will be deep within their lair, and when you strike at them it will come as they least expect it. Once the mission is carried out then we will return you to here."

"How will I know how to get back to the fortress?"

"The pilot of the other EVA, Unit 06. He has…unique capabilities, and can spirit you back here directly in good order." I wasn't entirely sure what he meant by that but he seemed confident that I'd make it back alive.

"Good. There was one thing I was worried about?"

We turned a corner as we continued talking, moving towards the elevator shaft at the end of the hallway. "And what is that, my child?"

"What happens if I get captured? By the bad guys, I mean?"

"Do everything in your power to not reveal that you had any prior contact with us," Keel advised. "Should you come into their custody we will make every effort to ensure it won't be for very long."

That wasn't terribly reassuring, but I suppose this was dangerous work after all. "Okay."

"Very good. Child, I am told you still have the dreams, the same dreams about the boy?"

"Yes, I can't seem to get rid of them."

"These dreams originate from your link with the EVA, a link that they are exploiting," the Chairman explained. "Seizing the EVA and returning it here and away from our enemies should end the matter and give you peace." As the strange dreams I had were increasing in both intensity and frequency, I certainly didn't need any further convincing to go through with this, if getting back my EVA could clear my mind once and for all I was all for it. "Okay."

"Lastly, be careful of your contacts with the others. Our enemies will try to 'friendship' you and bring you into their circle of familiarity, to surround you with comforts and pleasant things and use these to bring down your defenses. Avoid interaction when you can, and when you can't be on guard as none of them mean you well."

"I understand."

We finally reached the elevators where we would part company, as one elevator car would take me downwards towards the submarine pen below the mountain and from there I would go some ways offshore and later be taken by aircraft back to America. I turned to face the Chairman just before the elevator car arrived to take me.

"Thank you, Grandfather. For everything."

"Thank you, my child. You have no idea what a blessing it's been to find you." I didn't say anything further but just smiled a little.

"Please do you best and mind what I've told you. The stakes are quite high but you must focus your mind on the mission. Nothing else should matter to you."

"I will."

"Then with good fortune we will see you again shortly."

Keel didn't say goodbye or even shake my hand, but simply motioned to Piotr to swivel his chair around and lead him towards another part of the fortress. As he did so, Piotr just slightly bumped me and then pushed the chairman down the hall. A moment later the elevator car arrived and I took it, and then the doors closed and the car led me deep downwards below the mountain.

As I watched the elevator doors close I noticed that when Pitor bumped me he also put something in my hand. Inside the elevator car were two other men, big burly well-armed types who towered over either side of me. I glanced at both of them and saw they were looking forward towards the door and not at me. So I looked at my hand and noticed what Piotr placed there was a tightly wound ball of paper.

Gently I unfurled the paper, careful not to let the other two men in the elevator see what it was. It was a very small and short strip but there were bold letters marked on it, bearing a message.

RUN AWAY!

* * *

 _By this chapter we are at the Mid-Way point in the story. The stage is now set, as Erin is on her way to encounter the rest of our cast in her mission to get back her EVA unit. The next few chapters will take place at NERV itself, at the GeoFront in Japan and sparks will fly!_

 _Due to reasons related to work I am taking a slight break in writing, about 1-2 months, to catch up on business and the other parts of my life, and hoping to continue releasing new chapters in the New Year. I expect that this rate to have the complete story done by mid-Spring '17. There are plans for one remaining Blue Rose story and then on to original works, but I will focus on getting the current story over and done before writing the last one (and it should be the very last one)._

Please go to my Facebook page for updates and other story tidbits. Thanks.


	11. False and Real Tears

Within a few days of leaving the mountain fortress the plan was put in to motion, and I eventually found myself on a plane headed towards Tokyo-3. Initially SEELE had put me back into the same medical clinic that I had awoke in three months earlier, only now the nursing staff were all people I didn't recognize from that first time (and I sort of wondered what happened to them after SEELE picked me up earlier). We basically played it out just like earlier this year: I woke up in the hospital and then the staff tried to reach my father via NERV , only this time contacting the Japan NERV agency directly. Within the space of a few hours a black-suited agent arrived at the clinic and from him I was subjected to a battery of questions, during which I kept up the role of a distraught daughter asking about where my father was and what had happened to my home at Second Branch. Apparently satisfied that I was the actual Erin Forrestal I was promptly taken by the agent from the clinic and then put onto an unmarked private jet at a nearby airfield. It was only then when I realized the clinic was located in West Virginia.

Despite my pleading the agent and those with him didn't answer any of my questions regarding my father or NERV-2. I kept up the charade however, as by my continual asking I had to made sure it looked like I really didn't just wake up until now and knew nothing of what had transpired. It was like rewinding my life for the last three months, only this time I knew how it would go. The whole thing made me extremely nervous, and I suppose that probably helped me in being more convincing.

The flight to Japan took all night, and I crashed out on the airplane seat as it flew. In the morning when I awoke the agent said there would be someone to take care of me at Tokyo-3, and that they'd answer all of my questions. They also said that they'd provide me with fresh clothes and personal items, as when I left the hospital all I had on was a t-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a pair of running shoes all provided by the clinic.

My mission instructions were once in Tokyo-3 and alone I would be contacted by SEELE's other agents that were hidden inside the GeoFront, the massive underground fortress where NERV kept the Evangelions. They would contact me at the first appropriate time and give me further instructions. I was not to try and contact anyone else while I was there, and instead just play the part of a forlorn girl cut off from her home and family. Well, I could do that I figured.

Still, the message I received from Piotr just before I left SEELE-2 really bothered me. "RUN AWAY" it had said. Did I want to run away right now? Yeah, I sort of did, but then where would I go? There was no home left for me now, no reason to exist other than getting my EVA back. I didn't really feel all that great about those guys at SEELE but there really wasn't anything else for me and besides, the people who destroyed my home and family had payback coming. I flushed the note in the toilet before I left the airplane.

* * *

When we landed in Japan it was in mid-morning, and as I got out of the airplane there was a small contingent waiting for me at the bottom of the ramp, including a young woman wearing camouflage and two imposing black-clad security guards with sunglasses. The woman came up to me when I got down from the last step.

"Erin Forrestal?"

"Yes?"  
"Please come with me." Without saying much else she led me to a car and the four of us went from the airfield to an opening into the Geofront complex.

Whatever anyone had ever said to me earlier about Tokyo-3 didn't do it justice, as the GeoFront was truly massive. Basically we drove around the top level of the place in a separate little road that was built into the underground but you could see the area below from the car windows and it was ginormous. The open space must have stretched for over several miles, and down below on the grounds you could see grass and fields and even a lake among the buildings that were on the ground floor. Sunlight came through the massive opening at the top, which was blasted away three months earlier when the Japanese military dropped N2s on the place. There was a black, pyramid-shaped building placed closer to the center that I was told was the current command center and I made a mental note of where it was. There were no signs of the Evangelions themselves just yet.

Our drive took another half an hour until we reached the other end of the edge of the GeoFront, and then the staff people let me out of the car and led me to what looked like a small medical clinic. There they promptly examined me, took my fingerprints and my blood, and then swabbed my mouth for DNA, no doubt trying to ensure that I was me. I was quiet and played along, knowing that there would be much more to come.

The physical exams took maybe an hour and then I was walked down a succession of corridors, again with my escorts, eventually ending up in a large room that was labeled "Interrogation." That sounded ominous but I was prepared for this. I'd be asked questions by NERV about me and where I was, and I needed to be as convincing as I possibly could. The woman officer led me to a single chair in the middle of the room, which itself only had two doors and a large mirror in front, while the ceiling had lights and video projection equipment above. I waited, clutching myself to try and keep warm and keep my nerves from completely busting loose.

Suddenly a man's voice, speaking in an English accent, came over the room's speakers. "Good morning, Miss Forrestal." I was startled by the sound and shook. "Uh, hi!"

"I know this is all very confusing right now but we need to get some things out of the way first. I hope you don't mind."

Okay, it's game on. "Where's my father?" I asked, already knowing the answer but needing to play up the role.

"All in good time," reassured the voice. "Right now we need to verify your identity. Can you answer a few questions for us."

"Alright."

For the next several minutes I was given a simple set of questions about my basic facts, name, birthplace, and what I was doing at Second Branch. The NERV people were already aware that I was an Evangelion pilot and not just living there. Then they asked me about the day of my last test.

"What happened?" the English voice above asked me.

"I don't know, the last thing I remember was we were doing an activation test with the EVA and then I suddenly blacked out. Then I woke up in that hospital."

"Do you remember anything about the test?"

I shook my head. "No. It was just normal and then I suddenly blacked out."

"What did you do when you woke up?"

"I asked to see my dad, but no one there could help me. I was there for about two weeks and they just kept me in my room, and wouldn't let me use a phone or get to the Internet at all. I was finally able to get to a phone and called my Dad's number, and then called the Second Branch number but they were all disconnected. That was when that security guy came to get me at the hospital."

"The investigator from the Alliance."

"That's right. He told me the hospital called him and then he came to pick me up. Then he put me on an airplane and here I am." I then stood up, speaking to the mirror in front of me and trying to sound more desperate. "Um, excuse me but can someone please tell me what's going on? I mean, did something happen to my dad while I was out? Please just tell me!"

There was a long pause and then the speaker had one final question for me: "At NERV Second branch there was a vending machine in the pilot's ready room. Can you tell us anything unusual about it?"

Of course I could, as Vance had ruined the thing. "It had graffiti on it. Vance had scribbled DOUBLE-V WUZ HERE in black marker."

"Thank you."

I then sat there for a while not knowing what would happen next, still clutching myself in the coldness that I felt from being so nervous. Finally someone else came in through the doorway I had entered earlier. She was a petite, short-haired Japanese woman in a uniform who spoke good English. "Hello, Miss Forrestal. I'm Captain Maya Ibiki."

"Uh, Hi."

"I'm sorry for all of this. Please understand that security is very tight here at NERV so there's a need to make sure everything's carefully investigated."

It was time to up my game a little. "I really need to see my father," I said to her as I swallowed hard. "Can someone just tell me what happened?"

Captain Ibiki tried to explain further until I heard a sound and swiveled around in my chair. At the other end of the room, wearing a camouflage uniform, was Admiral Vinson. He was as big and impressive as I remembered him from before, but there was a sort of sadness to his eyes now, and he seemed more weary than when I saw him last.

I tried to play along, but I knew what was coming. "Admiral Vinson!" I greeted him.

"Hello, Erin. It's good to see you again!"

"You're the first familiar face I've seen," I said as I got off the chair and walked over to him. He tried to smile at me but it was forced. "A lot has happened since you've been out of action, Erin," the Admiral told me.

Time to hit it again. "Um, is my dad here?"

"No. I think you better sit down."

Here it comes. "Oh, God!" I cried as I fell back onto the chair while a video projection was shown against one of the walls of the room. The video showed a playback of what had happened in Second Branch, the same video that Chairman Keel showed me a few months earlier.

"There's no easy way to say this," said the Admiral. "About five months ago Second Branch...disappeared."

"Disappeared?!"

"There was an accident with Unit 04," he explained slowly, "while installing an S2 engine. Due to unknown causes what's called a 'Sea of Dirac' or a singularity was generated at the base and it enveloped everything from fifty miles away."

"Oh, no!"

"Truthfully we don't know what happened, although there's the possibility that they were somehow moved within space and time. Your father was among those at the base when this happened."

At that point I let the tears come out. It wasn't hard to do, as all I had to remember was why my life sucked so much. I put my hands to my face and did as they taught me back at SEELE, remembering everything that was good about my home at Second Branch, and about my dad, and my life there. And about how all of that was now gone.

I cried enough that Captain Ibiki came over and put her arm around my shoulder, offering me a handkerchief. I took it and promptly plunged my face into it, crying as much as I could while the Admiral continued. "There's more to it than that," he told me, "and there's been a lot of change within the Evangelion program itself. All things that you'll get to know in good time."

Here came the hardest part for me. "Was...was Vance there too?" I looked up at the Admiral, my eyes blown red from the tears. I knew the answer, because I knew what horrible thing he had done to his own kid. Admiral Vinson's face changed, grimacing but not quite bursting into emotion. "No," he told me. "Vance is dead."

I gasped. "What…what happened?"

"There was an incident here at Tokyo-3 with the EVAs just before the accident at NERV-2," he told me as his voice quivered. "I...I don't want to explain it further quite yet as we were all misled in many ways."

I didn't want to deal with this anymore so I screamed "NO!" at the top of my voice, and plunged my face back into the handkerchief, sobbing as loudly as I could. Everyone was playing their part in this charade and so was I.

"I'm sorry," was all he could manage. "We'll go over the rest later.

Suddenly there was another noise at the doorway and I saw the door to the room swing wide open. "Erin!" shouted a voice, a voice that I knew.

The boy was standing in the room in front of the door. Wearing outdoor clothes, he had messy blond hair and green eyes that matched mine. He looked at me with an intense glance, almost in desperation. The one who had ruined my life, the one who had wiped out everything that I loved, was now only a few feet away. I was angered, enough to make a big mistake and break my cover.

"Get away from me!" I shouted as I looked towards him. The expression on the boy's face turned to shock.

"Patrick!" the Admiral shouted at him. "Get back outside! She's not ready yet!"

Before he could say or do anything another young woman who also appeared Japanese grabbed him and dragged him out of the room, slamming the door behind her. I looked up at the Admiral, hoping that my response didn't give the game away. He was sullen with me, and reached to put a hand on my shoulder. "Sorry about that," he told me. "Captain Ibiki has set up quarters for you up on the top level, you can stay there until we have things worked out." I didn't thank him but at least nodded, and then still acted like a crying mess as Ibiki walked me out of the room a minute later.

It was heart-wrenching, but I had cried and bluffed my way through the first obstacle to getting back my EVA.

* * *

The people at NERV had put me into a small bedroom that looked nice enough, like a hotel room. It had a small bed, a desk, and a private bathroom. There was a TV screen on the wall that was turned onto an Information channel about NERV and Tokyo-3, with various scenes of the natural scenery of the surrounding area of where we were, and graphics in both English and Japanese. I had "recovered" myself enough to let Ibiki help me get settled into the room, which included her showing me that they had provided me with a few changes of clothes and some personal care and grooming items. She asked me if I needed anything and I just told her no, my face still flush red with all of the emotions of the morning. Then she left, but not before providing me with an ID card that she said I would need to get around the GeoFront facility.

Before I left I was told by the others at SEELE that any place they would put me would be wired for sound and video, and that I should expect to be under surveillance at all times. That included this place, so I was careful to maintain my "emotional" self while in the room, in case NERV's security was watching. After all that had happened however I didn't mind taking a shower in a bathroom that was much cleaner than anything at SEELE's fortress, so I stripped down and hoped to God they didn't have cameras in there too.

I took a lengthy shower, happy for at least one little pleasure in all of this that I had the opportunity to get very clean for once and I felt a bit better about things once I was done. My orders were to wait until either NERV was convinced that my story was legitimate and they would make me an offer to pilot EVA again, or until NERV possibly saw me as a problem, in which case SEELE was supposed to get me out of their hands as quickly as possible. How they planned to do that they didn't tell me. They also didn't tell me precisely how they were going to contact me once I was inside of NERV, only that someone would.

When I got out of the shower the bathroom was filled with the steam. I quickly wrapped a towel around me and as I turned to the bathroom mirror there was a message written on it.

THEY HAVE BUGGED THE ROOM

Startled, I didn't say anything but quickly turned around to see if anyone was there in the bathroom. There wasn't anyone, but the message on the mirror quickly disappeared and another one took its place.

YOU MUST BE CAREFUL

Somehow my unknown contact from SEELE was able to use the mirror to communicate. Figuring that he could see me, I erased the message on the fogged mirror with my finger and wrote a new one:

WHAT DO I DO NOW?

The message on the mirror then disappeared again and a new one came in reply:

WAIT UNTIL THEY TRUST YOU

I just silently nodded and then the message was erased and that was the last one I received that day.

* * *

Given the warning that I was still under surveillance, I wasn't entirely sure what else I could do other than look like the mournful daughter who just lost her father and friends. I knew I had to keep that up no matter what, otherwise they'd possibly see through me. So I spent the rest of that day on the bed in my temporary room at NERV, with no music and no TV turned on. I just lay there and thought about all of the horrible things that brought me to this time and place.

In the later afternoon the doorbell rang in my room. I guessed that someone from NERV would want to check up on me, and maybe we'd go for another interrogation session again as I was told in my training to be questioned multiple times by the enemy. I took my time getting to the door, careful to mess up my hair and look like an emotional wreck. It wasn't far from the truth. I had already changed into a plain red t-shirt and black leggings that were part of the clothes they provided me.

I opened the door and standing in front was a tall Japanese woman with long black hair wearing a uniform along with a red leather jacket. I recognized her as the woman who had pulled out my "twin" from the interrogation room earlier this morning.

"Erin?"

"Um, yeah?"

"My name is Colonel Misato Katsuragi," she said in accented English. "May I come in?"

My pre-mission briefing had told me about Katsuragi, about how she was an expert in both military strategy and child psychology and had used her position as tactical commander of the Evangelion pilots to win over her charges with very clever emotional manipulation. She was however as ruthless as they came. Because of that I was on my guard but I couldn't let her know that, so it was "game on" again.

"Sure, come in."

Misato entered and brought with her a bag filled with boxes, I could smell the aroma of freshly cooked food from inside. "I figured you hadn't eaten much since you came her so I thought you wouldn't mind if I brought you something." There was a small table and two chairs in the room, and she quickly unpacked everything and placed it on the table. It looked like Japanese noodles and barbeque along with canned iced tea. I'll admit that I stared at the food, as nothing I got from SEELE at any time could compare to how good this smelled. Maybe this was a trick to get my confidence but I was still starving despite it all, and this was a feast compared to what had been getting these last few months.

The woman handed me both a silverware set and also chopsticks, and I promptly chose the chopsticks and went after the food nearly as soon as I sat down. If she noticed anything she didn't say but instead joined me in eating for a few moments. I had to really restrain myself to avoid pigging out but still managed to finish most of my meal quickly.

"Beats hospital food, yeah?" Misato asked. I just nodded with a mouthful of noodles.

"I'm sure you're glad to be out of there," she continued, trying to strike up a conversation. I didn't take, instead distracting myself by eating everything in front of me and then finishing off the tea. I burped loudly, blushing bright red in embarrassment as I realized I just made a complete mess of myself and hoped she didn't see through me.

"Was it okay?"

"Yeah," I said, trying to get my voice back to something less than cheerful. "I needed that. I haven't had a good meal in forever."

"I suppose everything is very confusing for you right now," said Misato. "But you're not alone in this. Some of us have had to struggle with the same things you're dealing with now. I know myself how hard it is to lose a parent, and to lose a big chunk of your life all at once."

I got right to the point. "Admiral Vinson said my father possibly wasn't dead. What did he mean by that?"

Misato tried to give me her explanation. "What he meant was that a Sea of Dirac can be something like an interdimensional portal. We've had Evangelion units go in and out of these black holes intact, so there's likely something on the other side. But where and how it's not yet possible to know." She moved closer to me, saying "It's difficult but at the same time don't give up hope. Your own unit went in and out of the Sea of Dirac with the pilot inside and survived, so it's possible that your father and the others at NERV2 are somewhere out there."

"Doesn't help me any," I muttered back.

"I understand, and it's okay to feel that way. In the meantime, we're here to help."

"Then why are you keeping me here locked up?"

"You're not locked up," she said calmly in reply. "You're free to leave your quarters, and you can go around A Deck as you wish. But security is tight especially when it comes to the EVAs and the other pilots, and they just want to be sure your story checks out before we let you go anywhere else." I didn't say anything further and Misato leaned back on her chair slightly. I was being interrogated, I knew, just in a different way.

"Did anyone tell you that you had a twin brother?"

"No."

"Your father never mentioned it?"

I was upset at just the mention of my so-called twin. "If I really had a twin, Dad would have told me. He didn't keep secrets from me."

"I met your father," she said. "An interesting person, although you have to admit he was a bit on the paranoid side."

"We had enemies," I told her sternly. "He did what he could to protect me."

"Well, we're not your enemy, and you're not the only pilot who's come to us orphaned either," Misato told me. "I'd like to think that somehow we can find a way to help you make a new home."

I didn't say anything at first. To me my home was still Second Branch, not somewhere else and certainly not here at Tokyo-3. Misato persisted. "I realize that it may be difficult for you to consider now, but would you like to pilot EVA again?"

Breathing in a deep sigh I tried to consider my options. Getting back with EVA was my whole game plan here, and if this was my chance I had to play along. Yet these people were dangerous, and this could be a trick too. "What would it take to do that?" I asked her.

"First, your story needs to check out, that you were in some sort of coma for months and then came out of it two weeks ago. We had information about you that was different from that, so we want to be sure everything is correct. But, if you pass the tests and you get your clearance, with a little re-adjustment I can have you back in the EVA as soon as you're able."

"Okay," I said. "What do I have to do?"

"Just be honest about yourself and where you were and that's a good start," replied the officer. "I heard that you grew up pretty much alone at NERV-2. I'd think you'd probably like to meet others pilots like yourself, I'd think you'd hit it right off with them."

At this moment my heart began to tug at me. Growing up I had always been alone, and the idea that maybe there were other kids just like me within arms' reach was powerful. This is what I had always wanted. Yet at the same time I knew this was just bait. I was here to get my EVA and get out, any chance I had at a normal life had been blown away with Second Branch long ago.

"I told them everything," I said to Misato. "I just woke up one day and there I was in that clinic, and now I'm here. There's nothing else to say."

"I see, then I'm sure everything will check out." She then got up to leave. "If there's anything you need, or if you need to talk to someone, please let me or Captain Ibiki know. We're here for you."

I got out of the chair and followed her to the doorway. "Thanks."

She turned to leave but then swiveled around again to face me. "I know all of this is still a shock for you but perhaps soon I can arrange to have you meet Patrick. I think you'd find him quite fascinating." I didn't reply but instead just scowled, as the boy was the last person I wanted to see in all of this. "Whatever."

"Very well. Then good night and please get lots of rest." With that she left the room. I waited a moment further to make sure she didn't return and then plopped myself back onto the bed, slamming my fists into the mattress in anger.

I knew what she was doing: she was dangling "the twin" in front of me to see how I would react, and I couldn't help but express my anger. This boy had wiped out everything in life that I loved, but from this I knew somehow the path to recovering the EVA was going to lead right through him.

* * *

I woke up the next day, unsure of what I needed to do next. Even though I was "free to go anywhere," NERV was still keeping me away from anything important and especially the EVA. I had no real choice but to be patient and hope that my story was convincing enough for them to let me downstairs.

Feeling anxious and wanting to at least get in some exercise while I was here, I decided to go for some sort of walk around the top level of the GeoFront. Within the clothes they gave me there were some athletic shorts, which I paired with a green t-shirt and then put on the running shoes NERV also provided me. I decided a short jaunt to at least go through my current surroundings would help me in many ways, mostly to help clear my mind for what was going to happen next.

As I opened the door, standing in front of my quarters was another woman in a NERV uniform. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties with darker skin, dark eyes and long black hair but the most startling thing about her appearance was that there was a bizarre ornamental tattoo patterned all over her chin. Once she saw me her eyes brightened up and she greeted me in a cheerful voice that was accented, sounding Australian.

"Good Day, luv!"

Surprised by this stranger standing in front, I nearly jumped backwards. "Um…Good Morning!"

"Sorry to surprise you like that, dearie" she said to me in a cheerful, almost cocky sort of tone. "Lots of people usually get the willies when they see my _Ta Moka_ for the first time."

" _Ta Moka_?"

"That tattoo on my chin. Anyway, my name's Moira, Moira Wellington. Someone I know would like to talk to you for a bit. Would you mind coming along?"

With nothing else better to do and knowing I still needed to run the gambit of earning NERV's trust I played along, following the officer through several passages on A Deck until we reached a conference room. Standing in the room was an older man with grey, balding hair and a thin moustache, and he was wearing a khaki and green uniform very different from the others at NERV. He had narrow eyes that followed me intently as I entered.

"Hello again, Miss Forrestal," he greeted as I came into the room. "I'm Sir John Sheffield." He offered his hand to me and I gently took it. I couldn't help but notice that he had said "hello again" but hadn't remembered every meeting him until I remembered his voice as the same one that had interrogated me in the isolation room when I first arrived. "Hi," I said, trying to be as sheepish as I thought I should portray myself.

"Thank you for coming." We both sat down at the conference room table as Moria looked on from the doorway, on the lookout for anyone outside of the room.

"Allow me to explain why I've asked you to come see us today. I realize that you've been through a very harrowing and difficult experience," he said. "It's never easy to lose so much of one's family or home and especially to find this out months after the events. I do hope that you're able to cope well."

"It's…it's difficult but I just try to deal with it," I told him, unsure of where this was leading.

"I thought it might be best to help your, 'readjustment' to the new reality as it were," he continued. "Colonel Katsuragi and the others at NERV seem to be suspicious of your story but I believe that you deserve the benefit of the doubt. I couldn't have at all been easy waking up in a hospital bed and finding that your whole world had disappeared."

"It wasn't."

"I know, and I want to help in any way I can. May I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Do you have any strange dreams at night?"

"D-d-dreams," I asked nervously. "Dreams about what?" I fought to keep myself in control but I hadn't expected this at all. Sir John relentlessly continued.

"Dreams of a boy in a mountain cabin, having feelings that seem like you're living in someone else's head?"

What do I tell him? My brain ran at full speed trying to think of what to say without giving them any kind of clue to what was going on with me inside. I was afraid that if I did admit to having the dreams they'd know I was vulnerable to whatever that boy was doing, and I didn't want to do that. "Um, no. Nothing like that!"

The older man just smiled at me and after a moment replied. "You tell me 'no' but your eyes very definitely say 'yes.' No matter. How would you like to meet your other half again?"

"What?!"

"I've arranged this morning for you to see your brother, as I think it's about time that the two of you got properly acquainted." I recoiled from the man I as I realized what was happening, and tried to get out of the chair until I was pushed right back down on my shoulders by Wellington, who was now standing behind me.

"I want to go," I protested. "I don't want to see that boy!"

Sir John looked at me with a smirk. "It's not an easy thing to meet yourself as another person, but I think you'll find it all quite interesting. I certainly know that I will." The old man then leaned in closer to my face. "You should also know that whether or not you finally get a security clearance to go downstairs and reunite with your Evangelion ultimately depends on me," he told me, "and if you want that to happen then I suggest you fully cooperate with us. Is that understood, young lady?"

Breathing deeply, upset and angry, I swallowed my fear and went along with it. "Crystal clear."

After Sir John left I saw in the conference room for the next few minutes and waited, horrified at what to expect. My briefing back at SEELE-2 said that Patrick was very skilled at persuasion, and would pull any strings he could to win me over. He had managed to convince Dad no less, and if he could do that then there was no telling what tricks he would pull.

Suddenly he bounded into the room and then found himself a chair at the opposite side of the conference table where I was seated. Dressed in a blue and green NERV service uniform, the boy who called himself my twin was now face to face with me.

"Hi," he said in a cheerful voice. "Thanks for seeing me!"

"It wasn't my idea," I growled back. "They told me I should go through with this, as part of my 'readjustment'"

"Well, you were out of things for a while. I'm sure that was a huge shock," said Patrick. "I went through that myself, you know." I didn't say anything in return except to stare daggers at him.

"Anyway, once they give you a full clearance I can take you down and have you meet the rest of the pilots. I'm sure they'd all like to see you."

"Like I care."

He was persistently upbeat despite my defenses. "I know this sucks for you," said the boy, "I spent three months in…in nowhere locked inside the EVA. When I finally got pulled out, I found out that NERV-2 was totally gone."

That's it. "Yeah, because you blew it to hell!" I shot back, practically shouting it at his face.

 _Bingo. He recoiled back at the charge I flung at him._ " _I_ didn't do that!," he defended.

"You're the only survivor. How did _that_ happen?"

"It happened because EVA wanted it to."

Oh, screw me. "EVA?! You're joking, right? EVA just did that on its own?"

"She did," he said more calmly. "and she didn't kill them."

"Then where the hell is everyone?"

"You got me there. She told me she put them out of harm's way."

His nonchalant attitude about all of those people that I knew and loved just irritated me to hell but what was worse was how he'd talk about my own EVA being the real cause of everything. "So it just talks to you then?"

Patrick leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Erin, do you not remember the last time you were in the EVA?"

This was not a good turn of the conversation. "Of course I do. It was an activation test."

"And then during the test what happened?"

"Nothing," I lied, "I just blacked out and then woke up months later in that hospital."

"And you don't remember something inside the entry plug?"

"No! what are you talking about?"

"Something came to you inside the entry plug," he said to me, practically at a whisper, "and she told you something, said it right to your face."

How did he know that? "I don't remember anything!"

"But it happened! I saw it happen."

"Liar! You weren't there."

"I was," he said, tapping the side of his head. "I dreamed about it after it happened."

I tried to laugh this off but inside I was really worried about what else he knew. "Oh, you dreamed about it! You talk to the EVA and you dream about me talking to ghosts. You are so messed up, there is no possible way I am related to you."

"You told Vance that you had dreams about a boy in the mountains," Patrick continued. "Like you were inside of the boy."

Oh shit, it is him doing this after all. I tried to fight back but now I was scared, enough to where my hands started to tremble. This killer boy was in my head and now he was using it to get deep inside of me.

"I know that because Vance told me about it," he went, "plus I know that because I've got Vance's tablet and he taped you talking about it while you were visit at his house, and I also know that because when I was living up at Big Bear I had dreams all the time about you."

My guard was up as high as I could get it, but the truth was he seemed to know everything about me, and that was terrifying. "If you saw me say anything like that, it was just me being stupid, and I'm pretty sure I didn't dream about you!"

"Then how did you end up at my cabin?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"You came to our cabin one night and I found you at the door," said Patrick."'What's dead is alive! What's alive is dead!' Isn't that what you said to me?"

Wait, what? Wasn't that part of that weirdness that I felt back at the hospital when I first woke up. "And when did this supposedly happen?"

"Right after your accident."

Seriously? "Okay, then. So I just got out of the hospital and walked across the desert like three hundred miles to Big Bear Mountain from Second Branch, _Really?"_

"I don't know how you made it there, but you were there."

"You sure it wasn't some other stupid dream you had?"

"I'm not kidding you!" said Patrick, now shouting himself in frustration. "I freaking saw you with my own two eyes! Then dad sent his men and that's when I came to Second Branch."

"Look, I don't know where the hell you got all these ideas but I'm pretty sure I didn't dream about you, or meet up with ghosts inside of the entry plug, or anything else," I said to him in anguish. "Why the hell do you want to do this to me?"

The boy shrugged his shoulders. "If I was your twin wouldn't you want to at least know more?" It was more and more remarks like that which were really ticking me off.

"Let's get this straight right now," I sneered at him. "You are _NOT_ my brother, no possible way!"

Patrick then pointed at his face, the face that I had to admit did look just a bit like my own. "So, any similarity in our appearance is entirely coincidental then?"

"If I had some sort of a twin Dad would have told me."

"Dad was a jerk-ass, Erin."

With that I had about as much as I could take, important mission or not. I stood up from the conference room chair and screamed at him. "DON'T YOU DARE SAY THAT! He _loved_ me! He took care of me after mom died!"

"And just how did mom die? Did he tell you that?"

"It was an accident! It happened…"

"…when you were four," Patrick went on, practically reading my own mind as he spoke, "and then soon afterward he told you that you were going to be a pilot."

"So? That's not your business!"

The boy got up from his own chair and came right next to me, putting his own face just inches from my own. I didn't back down, and this time I was ready for a fight between the two of us. "Just who was it you saw in the plug then?" he said to me slowly.

"I told you, I didn't see anything!"

"Dad just used you: he sets you up and keeps me hidden away as a spare in case something happened, which it did. Then he pushes people around like chess pieces until he can make his move."

"That's not true at all!"

The boy was now interrogating me like a prisoner, and I felt helpless as he seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. "Did he ever leave you alone at the base?"

"Yes, sometimes."

"Where did he go?"

"He went to see people in Washington or other places, he had an important job!"

"Yeah, he went to go check on me in the mountains."  
"No he didn't! If you were actually my real brother he would have told me!"

He then switched the topic. "Erin, if fighting Angels were so important why was Dad only training you to fight other EVAs?"

I started to shoot back but then held my mouth for a moment. After spending months training at Second Branch to fight Angels, the thought that nearly every simulation I was in involved shooting Evangelions instead just occurred to me. "EVAs are just Angels, right?" I excused myself. "Copies of them. That's what they told us!"

"Dad was training you to attack NERV with Unit 04. He just used everyone so that he could bring on Third Impact himself."

No way. "Why would he do that?! What would be the point?"

"Because he hated the world and everything in it after Mom...Mom..." Patrick faltered, his own deep emotions coming out. "Mom was lost to the EVA."

Don't you dare talk about my mom, you asshole! "My mother has nothing to do with the EVA! She's just…just gone, that's all! And who are you to talk about her like that?"

"Because I saw her inside of it!"

Outside of me I wanted to put up a fight against this monster in the room, but inside of me my heart and brain were fighting a raging battle. When I had always been with the EVA before, I couldn't help but noticed the familiar and safe feeling I had. Even the smell of the EVA was somehow comforting. I remember when I first started to pilot and called the unit a "she." I didn't know why I did that, but I just did. But deep down, there was some part of me touched by the EVA, why was I so connected to her? Why would I do practically anything to be re-united with her. Why was she so important to me? That was the first that I really had any inkling of what was really going on with the Evangelion and I became frightened right down to my core.

"NO!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Patrick, himself now worked up into his own rage, shouted right back at me. "It's true and you know it, Dad just manipulated everyone. You, me, NERV, Second Branch, the Alliance, SEELE, everyone. After you freaked out he grabbed me out of the mountains, put me in Unit 04 and then send both Vance and I to Japan to set a trap for NERV, only I didn't know what was going on. He tells me all of this after Vance dies and he flew me back to Nevada, and then throws me in a cell for two weeks until he needs me again."

I tried to fight back but I couldn't. I couldn't even move, instead I was just trembling as tears came down my face. The boy could see the effect his words were having on me, and he slowed down just to be sure I understood what he was now saying.

"He didn't give a rat's ass about anyone, he just wanted the world to end."

My father always had that dark side, the side that seemed to drag him downward even in the happiest of times. "The world doesn't deserve to live," he said to me once. But no, I couldn't let this boy win, no matter what he said.

"It's not true! It's not, it's not..."

"He killed Vance, Erin." Patrick said softly. "Dad..."

That was too much for me to take. With all of my strength I raised my right hand and swung it right across that bastard's face.

"DON'T YOU EVER SAY THAT!" I screamed "Don't you ever say that! He would never do that! NEVER!"

"Erin," Patrick said in a sad tone as he felt the wound I just gave him. "I'm so sorry."

Fortunately for me I knew who the real murderer was, and pointed my finger right at the boy in front of me. "I know who _really_ killed Vance, alright?" I screamed at Patrick. "You, you, _NEVER_ speak to me again, you just leave me alone!" I then moved to run out of the conference room, but Patrick grabbed my arm and tried to hold me back. I violently shook him off and darted out, running at top speed to get out of there as fast as I could.

Not looking back I ran and ran as far as I could in this strange place, eventually finding my way back to my quarters. I burst through the front door and then plunged myself into the bed, burying my face in the pillows of the bed. How could he? How could he do that to me? I felt like I had been murdered myself, the boy had penetrated himself deep inside and dragged out everything that I knew and feared, then paraded it right in front of me. I had sworn before that I wouldn't ever cry again but I couldn't help it. Dad! Vance! Why? Why can you save me now, when I need you the most? Why did you let him kill you?

* * *

I didn't go out of my room for the rest of the day, but instead stayed inside the guest quarters where I was and sulked. When I did finally go out that evening, it was to do one thing: find out if I really was restricted to the top level of the GeoFront or find out if I could go down. Like everyone here I was given an identification/key card on arrival, and told to use it when I needed to go around the base. I tried it on the elevators and found out it wouldn't permit me to do downstairs, where NERV operations and the EVAs were. For now I was stuck here.

It felt like this wasn't at all going to plan as I was despite the nice words of my new captors still a prisoner, albeit one on a long leash. I was told I'd get assistance from agents that SEELE had also put inside of NERV's operation, but besides the unknown messenger who communicated with me through my bathroom mirror no one had contacted me at all.

Captain Ibiki came to the room again later that night to drop off dinner and again try to start up a conversation. This time I didn't budge much, still upset over the altercation with Evil Twin Boy earlier that day. Seeing I wasn't willing to talk much, she then left me alone for the night.

Before bed I took a shower and as I came out, there was a new message on my fogged-up mirror.

THEY SUSPECT YOU

Not good, not good at all. Maybe it was my over-reaction regarding Evil Twin Boy, but somewhere I had messed up. Nervous again, I wiped out the message and wrote my reply.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

After a minute a new message appeared.

USE YOUR TWIN TO GET TO THE EVA

It was the last thing I wanted to see that night.

* * *

 _Welcome back to the latest in the Blue Rose stories, as we now start the second half of_ The Other Side of Me _. I took a six-month break, due to a large amount of converging events (daughter going overseas to medical school, in-laws for extended visit, aggressive company sales campaign, losing one dog and gaining another, and other events in my real life). Hopefully I can maintain a two-week post schedule, and as of this writing have three chapters lined up, with hopes to finish the story at no more than 20 chapters._

 _I did a fair amount of reading and research while on break, and among the things I did was see the hit Japanese anime Your Name. If you've seen Your Name the whole idea of body-swapping comes to mind and while we don't really do that with Patrick and Erin, there are some interesting similarities in how the swap process allows each of them to see the other's life and get to know each other better. I liked Your Name, certainly it's aesthetically gorgeous and has a clever storyline, I was happy to at least see one Makoto Shinkai work which doesn't end in bittersweetness._

 _In this chapter we get our first real interactions between Erin and the "classic" EVA characters, as she meets with Misato and Maya while being interrogated. We will start to see a few more familiar faces as Erin spends time in Tokyo-3._ _Please stay tuned for the next part as our roller-coaster is reaching the crest and about to go screaming downhill._


	12. Curtain Call

_**Author's Note: FFN didn't properly alert subscribers from the last posting, so if you didn't see an alert for Chapter 11 please go back and read that first! Thanks!**_

* * *

The next morning I went to Plan B, which for me would require some serious emotional stuffing. I'd have to find a way to charm the beast today, in order to get downstairs. But, I figured, if Patrick was so anxious to have some sort of connection with me maybe I could use this to my advantage after all. It would be tough but I would give it the best go I could.

From the clothes they brought me I picked out another jogging outfit, with running shorts and a green and white t-shirt. How did they know green was my favorite color? Oh, of course, my "twin" must have told them. But then how did he know?

After getting dressed I tried to figure out a way to contact Patrick. Because I was still restricted, I couldn't just try and go down there. I needed to find a way to get him up here to A Level. But maybe the best way was just to go and ask someone.

I left my quarters and started walking around the residence area where they kept me, making my way towards a large windowed area that looked like some sort of lobby. Of course, I wasn't alone and hadn't been since I arrived here, as nearly every time I left my room there was always at least one black-suited security guard following me, often a Japanese woman in dark sunglasses who I could only guess was there to keep me from going places I wasn't supposed to go. But now to the task at hand: how to communicate with Patrick.

Fortunately a solution presented itself right in front of me: as I walked through the NERV reception lobby I saw another boy about the same age as me, dressed in a camouflage uniform happily using a camera to take pictures of various things around the lobby. From my mission briefing I knew that he was one of NERV's other EVA pilots, his name was Kensuke Aida, and he was the son of a Japanese Army general. Kensuke, despite the uniform, looked anything but military: he was short, bespeckled and freckled, with wavy brownish hair, and had this very impish look on his face as he kept taking photos. Were all EVA pilots weird? I really had to wonder by this point.

After seeing the boy in the lobby I carefully approached him, Kensuke not noticing me as he was so busy with the camera until I was just a few feet away. He turned and was startled, suddenly seeing me right in front of him.

"Woah!" Kensuke said as he jumped back a step.

"Hi," I greeted him, smiling and trying my hardest to really turn on the charm.

"You must be Erin," he said in accented English that I barely understood. "You look just like Patrick!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, but a lot more cute!" He promptly took his camera and took several photos of me.

"Hey," I said to the boy while he took the photos, "I'm actually looking for him. Do you know how I can get in touch?"

"He's up here somewhere," Kensuke replied, putting the camera down. "Looking for you too, no doubt."

Well that was going to make things much easier today, "He is?"

"Yeah. I just saw him go over there," he pointed towards a small doorway on the far side of the reception lobby. "it's a stairway to the top of this building, I watched him pop in about a minute or two ago. If you hurry you can probably reach him inside."

"Great, thanks!" I moved to get past Kensuke and then make my way to the stairwell. As I hurried off Kensuke called behind me. "Hey, when you make it downstairs come and see me, will ya?" I just turned and waived, flashing a big smile and then kept going.

I made it to that staircase and nearly immediately heard voices above me, one was a girl's voice speaking in what sounded like English-accented English, and other voice was all too familiar to me already. I slowly made it up the stairs and after about a flight finally saw them.

Patrick was there, sitting on the steps and having his arm tightly around another girl. This other girl was fairly tall, with brown hair tied in twin-tails and with red-rimmed glasses, and she wore the NERV uniform. From the briefing I knew she was another pilot, named Mari Illustrious. She looked emotionally bothered, her face was flushed red. Interestingly enough I had somehow expected the blue-haired girl to be with him somehow instead of this one. Maybe he's two-timing her then.

As I walked up the stairs I was spotted by the two of them as the "glasses girl" whispered something to Patrick. The boy looked right at me, not especially so cheerful to see me this time.

"Hi, Erin."

" _Another_ girlfriend of yours?" I asked him. He didn't even blush.

"Right now Mari's more of a sister to me than you are," he replied as they both got up from the stairs. "Looking for me?"

"I was." I stepped up to the same stair as Patrick and the other girl. "Can I have a word with you?" I asked as I shifted my gaze to the English girl. " _Privately._ "

Patrick thought to object but then Glasses Girl spoke up and excused herself. "I'll leave you two be. I've got training I'm supposed to be at anyway."

"Will you be okay?" He asked Mari.

"I'll be alright," she replied, trying to smile wide. "I just got my two steps back, now it's time for the three steps forward."

Patrick seemed genuinely concerned about her. "Take care." Mari then gently took his hand and squeezed it for a moment, just to give him some reassurance, and then she went down the stair way as her security escort of two female guards followed her. Just as she started down she looked at me, and then looked over her shoulder and called for Patrick again. "Pats?"

"Yeah?"

"Do remember what your Angel said to you before." Patrick didn't say anything but just nodded, and they all continued downward and out of sight.

Once we heard the stairwell doorway slam shut Patrick spoke. "Okay, you've got me alone."

"Not quite." I shifted my head towards my own black-suited escort who was standing just feet away from me. I'm sure he understood my meaning.

"Unfortunately as long as we're here in the building they won't be going away," he replied. "Don't worry, they don't really care what we do or say. Heck, Rei and I…"

"…If you want to know why I'm here," I interrupted at nearly a whisper, "I'm only going to tell you and you only, and with no one else around _including_ them."

"Unless we go to the bathroom together," he whispered back, "unfortunately we're not going to be that private."

"Do they follow you into the EVA?"

"Thank God, no!"

"Then that's where I want to go."

"Sorry. That's not going to happen until they get your security card stamped for entry past A Deck."

It was time again for Game On and I swallowed my anger, approaching him to just inches away. I tried to make myself look forlorn, girl in distress and all that, and hoping that my own charm offensive would work.

"I really need to go down there and see it. I'm sorry if I was a bit difficult before. It's just so many things going on and being out of it for so long and…"

"I get that, you know," said Patrick, his voice sounding more cheerful. "I know this can't be easy for you."

"Can you help me then?"

He thought about it for a few moments and then an idea suddenly came to him. "Go to your room and stay there. I'll be there in one hour."

"What are you going to do?"

"You'll see," he said with a smile.

* * *

Patrick had darted off from the stairway, hurrying to somewhere to set up whatever plan was in his head and seemingly very anxious to find a way to get me downstairs. Hopefully this would work. So I went back to my quarters, said on the bed and waited, unsure of what was going to happen next. The wait was intolerable and after an hour he didn't show. Had he been caught? I was angry at myself for trusting the dolt. But five minutes past an hour there was a knock on the stateroom door and I got up off the bed and opened it.

There he was, standing in front of me wearing an orange EVA plugsuit with black piping, virtually the same style as my own except the suit was cut for a boy, along with a black cap and dark sunglasses. Over his shoulder was an orange-colored duffel bag with the number "04" printed on it. Patrick quickly pushed his way inside the room and shut the door behind him.

"You're late."

"I had to make a couple of stops to make this work," he replied as he threw his duffel bag onto the bed. Reaching inside Patrick pulled out a duplicate of his own plug suit along with the same hat and sunglasses that he was wearing.

"Here's how we do it: we're going to be twins!"

As Patrick explained his plan, I initially though that this was massively stupid. Basically we would both wear plugsuits at the same time and then go in different directions in order to meet up at the EVA. As he continued with the plan I realized that there was actually a ghost of a chance this would work, as both suits were lead-lined and blocked the microchip that I was injected with when I first arrived at Tokyo-3, so I wouldn't be tracked trying to run past NERV security. I just had to fake being a boy for however long it took to make it downstairs.

Sensing that I was still very skeptical of this working, Patrick pleaded for me to have confidence in him. "Look, it's not a perfect plan but if we move fast enough they won't catch up to us until we make it to the plug. They might catch you in the EVA and bring you back but at least you get to see her again. Isn't that worth the risk?"

 _It sure was._ "Okay," I agreed, smiling to myself that I'd finally found a way to get downstairs to the EVA after all.

To get rid of my security escort, I conjured up a task for them that they'd hopefully couldn't ignore: I needed menstrual pads, like, now. Poking my head out of the doorway I asked the black-suited female agent that NERV put on my security to help me run and get some. She promptly did so, leaving two other male agents who were Patrick's own escorts standing in front of the door.

After sending the female agent on my wild goose chase I went to the bathroom to change into the plug suit. Because it was built for a boy there wasn't a lot of room for my "womanly accessories" and it wasn't particularly comfortable on my chest as a result.

"This really pinches," I complained to the boy.

"Sorry, but if you're me you can't have boobies, can you?" Patrick replied with a smirk.

What an asshole. I just grabbed the hat and sunglasses out of his hand and then put them on, hoping that with my now short-cut hair I could be convincing in my new role. "Just tell me where to go."

Patrick gave me detailed instructions on how to make it down to the EVA cages, and as basically I was wearing nothing but a plug suit my security team would be making sure I got there as I didn't have an ID/Key card with me. Conveniently, the pilots at NERV were allowed to access their Evangelions at any time, so just before we split up he called the crew chief to have them waiting for me/us.

Once I was sure on the path and adjusted my disguise to conceal as much of me as I could, I burst out the front door and practically ran towards the elevator banks. I took me a couple of minutes to make it to the security gates first and as I got there I waited for the guards to catch up. Wanting not to be recognized, I didn't stay put but rather wondered around and otherwise tried to keep in motion as one of the two men ran his own ID/Key card and opened the gates for us. Then as soon as the doors were open I again went into a near sprint and rushed right through the open doorway.

Seeing that the security guards were struggling to keep up I decided to turn up the speed and tried to remember everything that the boy had told me about getting around the GeoFront. Even though I was rushing as fast as I could, I couldn't help but be awed at just how huge this place was, as the Geofront was inside of what looked like an underground cave literally miles across. Blue sky shown through the top as I briefly looked around and then found another passageway that took me back inside the fortress interior.

To make it to the EVA cages I had to run through several corridors and then reach another central, well-guarded elevator bank. Because I had the plug suit, much to my own surprise the camouflaged-uniformed soldiers let me right on the elevator! I quickly pushed the "close" button after giving the elevator the floor number, but unfortunately for me they were just quickly enough to catch the door with their hands to get them a push open.

While the elevator car took me far down into the interior of the GeoFront, I stood facing the wall with my back to the guards and ran through my head what had to happen next. If Patrick could get me into the EVA then I could activate it from inside and then it was going to be time to get the heck out of here but there were some big worries for me. One was whether or not this was just some sort of trick on Patrick's part, some sort of plan to get me isolated and alone and then do whatever with me he pleased. He seemed sincere, almost needy in the way he spoke, but I couldn't let that get to me: this was the boy who had killed Vance, and Dad, and everyone else. He was dangerous, and I was hoping that I wasn't his next target. I had to make it my unit however as soon as I could, and given that NERV hadn't officially cleared me yet, this seemed like the quickest way to do it.

The other part of my own plan was what to do about Patrick once my EVA was activated. After all, if it was as he said he'd be in the plug with me at least in the beginning, and I didn't want him in there while I escaped. I needed to work out a way for just me to get into the EVA and make sure he didn't make it in.

The elevator doors opened and then I promptly walked out as fast as I could. I was now on the floor where NERV kept their EVA cages, and those things were truly massive. Basically like ship drydocks for their Evangelions, each one being nearly fifty yards across and bigger than anything either at Second Branch or at SEELE's hidden mountain outpost. Jogging across steel scaffolding, I hurried as I tried to reach Unit 04's berth, passing by at least two other EVA units that were being worked on or just in repose as they stood chest-deep in giant pools of LCL. Once past the scaffold for Unit 08, I could see the familiar white-silver finish of my unit. There she was! I didn't realize until now how much I missed my EVA until I saw it again, and once I did I sprinted as fast as I could to reach the cage.

Unfortunately I got to about just the edge of the Eva cage itself when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Nearly tripping as I spun around, I saw the two escorts that I had ditched at the elevator and they were not happy at all.

"All right!" one of the two men said to me in accented English. "Joke's Over!" I tried to get away but the other agent grabbed me by the arm and with his other hand took off my hat and sunglasses. The gig was up.

Feeling annoyed, I shook off the guard's arm and then gave them both a sneer. They didn't try to grab onto me again but surrounded either side of me, waiting for their supervisor to come and get us. There was no one else here at the EVA cage other than us and three maintenance crewmen in red jumpsuits, all of whom started to approach us.

"Pilot Forrestal?" asked one of them, a tall guy with red curly hair.

"Sorry," replied the first agent. "Just a prank."

I looked around and saw my EVA, standing tall and just within feet of me. So close and yet so far away, I thought and I closed my eyes and let out a large sigh. I had failed in my goal, and now I was caught. It couldn't get much worse than this, I suppose.

A second later I heard several "pumps" and looked behind me as both of the black-suited agents immediately fell down backwards on the steel gantry. My heart jumped as I swiveled around to see what had happened, and it was then when I saw that the maintenance crew were holding their own guns.

Two of them rushed over to grab the bodies of the security agents and drag them underneath a large tarp on the gantry, while the third, the red-haired man, approached me.

"Are you all right, Princess Tiger?" he said, using the code word I had worked out with SEELE before I left the fortress.

"I think so," I said, still shaking after that sudden attack. For the second time in my life I had watched someone being killed right in front of me, and it made me feel horrible inside. Even so, EVA was right there and now the tables had turned.

"I need to get into the unit," I told the SEELE agent as I moved to open the EVA entry plug hatch.

"Not yet," he ordered, "stand there and wait. We've got to get the other one first."

What _other_ one? Before I could ask the question I saw Patrick approach, dressed in his own plug suit and being practically dragged towards us by another black-suited NERV security agent wearing dark sunglasses. The new agent was also Japanese and was very tall and gruff-looking. I grabbed my own hat and sunglasses up off the deck, knowing that I might need them again very soon.

Patrick shook off the bigger agent's arm and then ran right up to me, a sorry look on his face. "Sorry you got caught," he told me. I didn't reply back but I couldn't calm myself down and still felt myself shaking. I knew what was about to happen: the boy was going to die right in front of me, and while it was what I had wanted something started to bother me about the whole thing.

He was about to say something else when Patrick took a good look at one of the red-clad men that were behind us on the gantry, noticing something unusual about him. I watched as Patrick's eyes went up in surprise. "Hey!" he called out at the technician with red hair. "You're not my crew chief!" The black-suited agent who had come down with Patrick suddenly reached for his gun inside of his jacket.

Before he could do anything else, the red-haired infiltrator produced a pistol and came down hard on Patrick's head with the butt of the grip. As that happened, I clenched my fists and shut my eyes as tight as I possibly could: I had already seen two people get killed today, and I didn't want to see it happen again, even to the boy I hated. There was the bangs of several shots and I could hear bodies and other objects hit the steel gantry, and there was an overwhelmingly acrid smell of gunpowder. The echoes of gunfire faded and I kept my eyes shut for a few more seconds then slowly opened them, afraid of what I would see. On the floor next to me were four bodies, one of which was Patrick in his plug suit.

I looked at Patrick down below me and didn't see that he had any bullet wounds, and then noticed that he was still breathing. Something inside of me felt relieved that he didn't die, even though I wanted him dead so badly.

The survivor of the gun battle, the big man with red hair, pointed to me and then to the EVA's entry plug. "Get Inside!" he shouted, "I've already given the signal. The other one will be here any moment!" By that he meant Weird Creepy Boy, the one called Kaworu, would be coming with Unit 06 to help me escape.

As I shook my head and tried to get myself to focus, I saw that the SEELE agent picked up an unconscious Patrick up off the floor and carried him over to Unit 04's entry plug. As he hurried, part of his hair shifted and it was then I saw that the red hair was a wig, and that the agent had worn a disguise. Much to my surprise, the man tossed Patrick inside of the open hatch of the plug.

Oh no, this was _not_ in the plan. "Why is _he_ going in there?" I asked.

"Orders," he curtly replied. "You get in there, NOW!" he practically barked at me. Well, he didn't have to tell me to get inside and I quickly hopped through the hatch and back inside my own EVA.

The inside of Unit 04's entry plug was exactly as I remembered it, and for the first time in a long while I breathed a long sigh of relief. I was home again, finally in familiar surroundings. I saw on the floor of the plug Patrick's unconscious body, crumpled up on his side and oblivious to what was now happening. Should I tie him up or something, I wondered? But he looked pretty out of it, and I knew I didn't have time and didn't want to risk waking him up by moving him.

Time to get moving. I jumped to the Throne seat and immediately grabbed the hand actuators, popping off the cover of one of them to reveal the keypad. Dad had installed a few extra features in our EVA units, things that he said the Japanese units didn't have and one of them was a control-lock out feature. It wasn't a simple matter of just flipping a switch, but using the keypad on the actuator I could find out if NERV had a remote control over the entry plug. After about a minute of searching through programs using one of the smaller video displays in the entry plug, I found out where the NERV software was installed and them promptly wrote a short but sweet script to force a command loop. Smiling to myself at being able to get that done, I was now in complete control over my EVA and everything was going to be just the way it should be.

For the next few moments I waited, careful to put back on the hat and sunglasses Patrick had provided me with. If Weird Boy attacked with Unit 06, then NERV would naturally call out all of its other EVAs to respond and here I was, all ready to go. All I had to do was wait for the alarm to sound.

It took a few minutes but finally alarm klaxons were heard all throughout NERV. Inside of my entry plug, I grabbed my actuators nervously and waited in anticipation. Would they find out who I was? With Patrick actually in my entry plug, I realized this increased my chances of getting out of here as they wouldn't find him on the outside and wonder who was piloting Unit 04.

Finally the screens on the wraparound entry plug display fully came to life and the EVA started through its activation phase. There were voices in Japanese all around the audio, I guess checking off different steps in the launch process. But on the throne I just sat silently and waited, closing my eyes and trying to concentrate on the EVA itself. Would the ghost show up again this time? I dreaded seeing that again and hoped that it wouldn't be coming back today, or ever again for that matter.

I looked up at the screen above me as a warning was displayed: ACTIVATION FAULT. That had never happened before now. What did these jokers do, break my EVA unit? I closed my eyes again and kept focusing all of my mental energy on the EVA. Through my brain I ran through every strong thought I could think of, parsing through memories of Mom and Dad, of Vance, of anything that I ever did that was wonderful, from birthday parties and gymnastics, and Doctor Foch's cookies and everything else I could think of. After a few tense seconds I heard an electronic ding and opened my eyes. On the display was "EVANGELION UNIT 04 ACTIVATED." Hurray! One more step forward.

A display reading to my left read SYNC RATE 12.31% and I knew it was poor but I guess being stressed and out of it probably left me a bit weaker than before. No matter, I could still pilot. The whole wraparound display went through various schematics and then showed me the exterior of where I was in the EVA cage. Suddenly a video call screen appeared, on the display was a Japanese male NERV officer with glasses. I turned my head slightly so he couldn't get a good look at me.

"Forrestal?" he asked in English. "Are you feeling okay?"

I tried to disguise my voice to make it deeper, so they'd think I was Patrick. "EVA-04 ready for launch!"

There was a long pause before the NERV controllers gave me any instructions, and in the meanwhile I could hear the audio chatter mention that there were two other units, EVA-01, and EVA-08, that were both being activated elsewhere around the cages. On a smaller call-out screen on my display there was an image of something that had just dropped in the middle of the GeoFront interior, something that I knew might be my ticket out of here. Trying to keep myself calm, I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on just the EVA and nothing else.

"Boys Team!" called out a voice on the audio. "Units 01, 04, 08, move into the interior, now!" Now was my time to get out of the cage, as an elevator slowly pushed us upwards towards the surface level of the GeoFront's spacious interior space. The other two EVAs that were in my "team" were also being pushed forward along other ramps, and within a minute we had reached the inside. I looked all around me, now appreciating just how large the interior of this place was, as even the EVA looked small compared to what was above me. At the very top I could see the large, torn-out opening of the dome and in the center of that was a EVA-sized blur that was hovering just a few hundred feet above NERV's HQ pyramid.

Seeing movement below me I looked downward and saw a mechanical conveyor track over and open up its compartment, revealing a Pallet Gun intended for my use. I immediately picked it up and then moved a few more steps into the interior. Checking the gun, I saw that it was loaded with fifty rounds of live ammo, and was armed and ready to go but that the safety was on. I kept the safety on but started working on where everyone was placed in the Geofront, in case I had to shoot my way out of here. My heart was beating fast and my breathing was hard. Feeling horribly nervous, I just swallowed and tried to maintain composure. After all, I was supposed to be my evil "twin" for the next few moments.

The hovering blur got closer to the ground and moved towards the black pyramid, and then Admiral Vinson's voice was heard on the audio: "Boys team, move into position surrounding the unit and close to five hundred meters. Hold your fire until we get a firm idea on what's going on here."

I could hear the other pilots' voices on the speakers. "Yes, sir!" said two others in accented English. But I didn't reply. I didn't want to give away any chance I had. Instead I just quietly thumbed off the safety on the Pallet Gun and waited.

On my cockpit audio came another voice, this one from the pilot of the EVA unit that had just intruded NERV's airspace. It was Kaowru, sounding smugly confident. "Greetings to NERV and the Alliance," he said.

The Admiral's voice came back in reply. "Who the hell are you?"

"This is Evangelion Unit 06," said Kaworu, "which I am now surrendering to you." That threw me off a bit. Surrendering? I'm pretty sure that's not what he really had planned.

"That's very appreciated," said the admiral with a skeptical tone in his voice, "but I'd like to know whom I'm speaking to."

"All will be revealed to you very soon, but I will only surrender this EVA to the boy named Shinji Ikari."

It was a trap, I knew, and I stood at the ready, prepared for anything. My EVA's finger was on my trigger, and I watched and waited with agony. I really just wanted to get the hell out of here. Then through the audio, I could hear one of the other pilots, Shinji Ikari the pilot of Unit 01, start crying with emotion. "K-K-Kaworu?! You're alive?!"

"Shinji, come to me! Come to me now."

I watched on the display as the purple-colored Unit 01 dropped its gatling gun and then ran like a moth entranced by flame, towards the blurred object right in front of us, both of it's arms reached out wide-open. Well that was completely unexpected I thought, figuring that apparently I had really missed out on a lot of history while I was away. What would happen next?

"Forrestal!" I heard the Admiral's voice on the speaker, "Get your goddamn act together and grab Unit 01 before he does something stupid. Now! Forrestal! Forrestal?" But again I didn't reply, knowing any second now the trap would be sprung.

Unit 01 moved at a full run just to within arms's reach of the blurry image in the center of the GeoFront, and on the speakers I could hear shouting as several of NERV's controllers and other screamed at the boy to warn him off. Just as the EVA made it to Kaworu's own unit, the forcefield around him changed colors and extended further outward.

The admiral had lost his patience. "Unit 06," he demanded, "withdraw or shut down immediately or we will engage you as a hostile target!"

"As you wish," came the boy's voice and immediately the forcefield disappeared, revealing the blue-colored EVA. From the back of the EVA came something else, a glowing blue tentacle of light that started waving around like a long whip. For Unit 01, Kaworu's EVA grabbed it with its right hand and then pulled out this large spear-looking thing from its back with it's left hand. The sight of it freaked the NERV controllers out immensely.

"It's the real Lance of Longinus!" Maya Ibiki's voice came on the audio. "Shinji-kun! Don't go near him!" The warning came too late, and Unit 06 took the spear and thrust it right into EVA-01's left side. The screaming voice of the pilot filled my audio.

The silver-haired boy didn't mess around, as now Unit 01 was paralyzed and collapsed on its knees right in front of us. Almost immediately guns and missiles from firing positions all around the GeoFront's interior lashed out at Unit 06. There was a ring of blasts all around '06 as it used its own force field to defeat all of the incoming attacks, and then it sprang out in a widening circle of blue light that stretched all around the outer perimeter, striking nearly everything around it. There were explosions everywhere, and I had barely remembered to get up my AT Field just before I could feel the shockwaves around me.

Over the audio I could hear shouting of orders from the NERV commanders, to me and to the others to try and marshal up a response to the intruder in their midst. They continued to call for Unit 04 but I still kept quiet, shutting my interior video camera down but keeping focused on the screen, looking for our chance to escape. In the background of the audio I also heard the continuing, terrifying screams of the pilot of Unit 01, as whatever the spear was doing to his EVA was hurting him as well.

I wiped the sweat off my forehead and tried to keep my mind on what was happening. What was I supposed to do now? Fight, run? No one was giving me orders, it was up to me to figure it out. NERV still hadn't suspected who I really was yet, but I felt like it might happen soon. If a move needed to be made it was now. On my video display I saw the green, black and white colored Unit 08. Instead of running away or taking cover, he instead ran the EVA towards the gatling gun that Unit 01 had dropped and picked it up, and then began charging Unit 06.

"Hold on, Shinji!" the boy piloting EVA-08 shouted through the audio, "I'll save you!"

As he grabbed the cannon, I could see Unit 08 right in front of me, and my EVA's tactical display put a target marker right on it. In my EVA's hands was a Pallet Gun, fully loaded with live ammo. I knew I could take him down any moment I wanted. I could shoot him and then join up with Unit 06 and then I'd be home free from there. Grasping the actuators, I concentrated on the target. It would be so easy, with his back turned to me all I needed to do was use a short burst to take him down while his AT Field was focused towards the front of him. Then run over and finish him off while he was on the ground before he could get up again. I had done it before, in simulations dozens of times, and I had watched Vance do it to targets with savage efficiency. Holding the grips tightly, I focused on the target and waited for just the right moment.

Unit 08 fired the gatling gun right at EVA-06, blowing all of his ammo in one long blast as hundreds of bullets bounced off of '06's AT Field. Whoever this kid was he really didn't know how to fight. Who was that pilot anyway? Unit 08 was one of the recovered Mass Production series that had been recycled into a pilotable EVA by NERV, I remembered from my pre-mission briefing. It's pilot was Kensuke Aida, the same boy I had run into at A Deck while I was looking for my so-called twin brother. He had taken my picture like I was some sort of model while I was searching for Patrick, and to me seemed kind of nice. And now he was in front of me, locked in combat with my ally, with my crosshairs right on him.

No, push it back, I told myself. This is war. These people killed Dad and Vance and all of those other people back home. It's time for payback, it's time for…

My breathing got heaver and then I felt something, something I hadn't felt for a long time. There was a sort of feeling that weighted on me and I couldn't tell if it was from within the EVA or just inside of me, but something held me back. I didn't move the gun up to shoot. I couldn't. I could do a lot of things, even a lot of bad things, but this I couldn't do. NERV hadn't discovered who I was yet, as on the audio I could still hear people calling for Patrick and Unit 04 to help in the battle. I knew that I was in a perfect position to exploit their weakness and royally screw up things for them. But I wasn't going to shoot a teenaged boy in the back, no matter what he was doing. There wasn't much difference between me and him, I knew, so what could I do? I didn't know, so I just stayed stationary and waited for something to happen.

The gatling gun had run of ammo, so Unit 08 dropped it and tried to rush towards '06 to free his captured friend. Kaworu's unit then pushed out a new force field, one that kept Kensuke and his own unit from getting much closer. I could hear the pilot on audio feel as he struggled to close with his enemy, and now there was another pilot on the battlefield as the green-colored Unit 05 entered from one of the side gates of the GeoFront's interior. My gaze shifted towards the blue light forming again from the back of Unit 06, and I saw the glowing tentacle slender itself into something that looked like a stinger. Over the audio came the other EVA pilot's voice, screaming loudly. She had a British accent, just like that crying girl in the stairway, and I knew who she was.

"Kensuke! Forget the field, just get going now! Run away, damn it! KENSUKE!"

But the girl's warnings came too late. Before he could react, the blue stinger plunged right through the center of his EVA. There was a blinding flash and a blast wave that filled the whole space of the GeoFront, and I kept up my AT Field and closed my eyes as we shook with the explosion.

A few seconds later I opened my eyes again and saw a fiery cross emerging from the wreckage of what used to be Unit 08. It had been utterly destroyed. The boy, Kensuke, was dead.

Oh shit, I thought to myself, what I am doing here? Was this what Piotr's warning was about? Kids killing kids? Oh God I just want out of this mess. I didn't' sign up for this I…

A video screen opened up on my display, as somehow the pilot of Unit 05 had been able to get through my own firewall while she fought with Unit 06. "Patrick!" she shouted at who she thought I was. "What the hell's wrong with you? Why are you just standing around?" Still I didn't reply, but I knew how angry she was having watched while one of her friends had been butchered right in front of her, while I just stood idly by and did nothing. Finally facing the video call screen I looked right at her without taking my sunglasses off, and finally she knew what had really happened.

"Oh, no!" gasped the girl on the screen, genuinely surprised by her realization of who I was. Using my keypad in the control actuator arm, I turned off the video call and then quickly re-coded it to prevent another intrusion. I had been found out.

Instead of attacking me however, Unit 05 was instead struck by Kaworu's light tentacle and one of it's legs was sliced off as LCL sprayed all around. The Evangelion itself screamed with a horrible howl but then did something I had never seen EVA do before, it transformed into an animal resembling a misshapen three-legged beast.

Could EVA do that? I was horrifying to see it twist and transform like a werewolf right in front of me. What was really going on? I froze in fear, my hands gripping the actuators tightly but I was unable to do or say anything else except watch the battle in front of me.

The green beast that Unit 05 had become charged '06 in fury, racing towards it as it howled. She got to within just beyond arm's reach of the enemy when EVA-06's tentacle again swiftly found its mark and sliced the whole thing neatly in two. I saw from where I was standing that the entry plug started to fly out of the back of the EVA, but then the blue tentacle of death came back for one more swing and sliced up what remained of the EVA. The explosion filled my screen and I felt the shock wave push against my EVA again. I closed my eyes, holding on tight and not sure of what else I could do except just stay here.

When the blast wave cleared I could see another cross-shaped plumb of fire right in front of me, the pyre on which Unit 05 had been burned. Standing not far away was Unit 06, unscathed by the battle, and with the collapsed Evangelion 01 laying at its feet. All around us the interior of the GeoFront was a field of fires and explosions and acrid black smoke. Expecting to be attacked myself, instead my unit remained standing in the midst of it all.

A voice came over the audio, crackling with disturbance. It was Admiral Vinson, and he spoke in a grave tone.

"Forrestal," the Admiral said over the speakers, "I don't know what the hell your problem is, but you just saw two of your fellow pilots get sliced to pieces by that enemy in front us. Right now you're pilot Ikari's only hope. Get over whatever your problem is and go after him. That's a direct order!"

Someway or somehow NERV still didn't realize that I wasn't actually on their side, and even now they were calling for our help. I looked down below my control throne and saw the unconscious body of Patrick lying on the floor of the entry plug. Idiot, I thought, you missed your chance to save your friends.

"Forrestal," Vance's father's voice came over the audio. "Do it now or you're through!"

I guess he was right about that as another voice came over my speakers, this one was much different, and spoke in an indifferent tone. "Time to go," said Kaworu. I breathed a deep sigh of relief, wanting nothing better than to get out of here. Snapping out of my battleshock I ran the EVA right towards Unit 06 at full speed. As I moved closer to it, Unit 06 produced an energy field of glowing blue light and quickly expanded the sphere close to where I was. Within another second I only saw blue light all around me as I stopped moving my EVA. My display went haywire as text and graphics screamed in random directions all around. I could feel the EVA being lifted off it's feet however, and knew this must be what the Chairman had said about Unit 06 being able to get us away. I leaned back in my control throne seat and breathed out air slowly, then took my hand and wiped off the sweat from my forehead as I finally removed my hat and sunglasses. Frustrated and still scared I threw the sunglasses towards the display, watching as they floated towards the screen in front of me. This was not what I had ever expected EVA piloting to ever be like.

* * *

The journey back to SEELE-2 was short and uneventful, as within maybe a minute we appeared right above a giant hanger door in the mountain that was SEELE's base. For the first time I could see SEELE-2's home from the outside. The peak was sharp and looked like a blade cutting into the sky, the mountain itself appeared as black granite covered with patches of snow. It wasn't as picturesque as Mount Fuji, but instead it was dark and ugly as I'd ever seen any mountain be. Appropriate, I thought.

Unit 06 let us float down in his blue bubble sphere until we finally landed somewhere near SEELE's EVA cages. Controllers called to me and directed me to one of the open berths, and I maneuvered Unit 04 to nestle within the dock until it was plugged back in. As soon as the entry plug was pulled out I got out of my chair and rushed towards the exit. Along my way I looked at the unconscious Patrick just lying there against the entry plug wall, not sure how to feel about him. Exhausted, I left him there and then burst out of the open hatch once it was opened.

While I wasn't really happy to be back at SEELE-2 I was certainly relieved. Nothing had really gone as I expected, and all I wanted to do now was sleep. Kraus was waiting for me at the gantry but I just rushed past her on my way back to my cabin. I didn't want to talk to anyone.

Once in my room I practically tore off my plug suit and put my naked self in the shower, pushing the water as hot as it would go. Maybe it was me or maybe they just ran out of hot water, but I shivered inside underneath the spray while I tried to clean up. I had seen more death and horror than I had ever wanted to see before, and hoped at least the shower itself would transform me back into something more normal. But I felt cold, and I kept feeling cold and I couldn't stop myself from feeling cold no matter what I did.

The image that fixed most in my mind was Unit 08, and watching as Kaworu's tentacle of deathly blue light had sliced right through the center of him. Kensuke Aida had just been trying to save his friend and he died for it, right in front of me as I stood and did nothing. No I didn't kill him, but I didn't really help either.

Kids killing kids. Was that what EVA really was? My heart sunk as I finally felt myself drift off in my bed. I was a part of this now, but I felt dirty.

I was so exhausted from the whole experience of going to Tokyo-3 and getting my EVA back that I didn't really wake up for about two days. I just spent the time in my cabin, mostly on my bed just lying there. My mind went into complete neutral, barely getting up except to go potty or drink something.

In the end I had accomplished what I had set out to do: I had taken Unit 04 from those who had stolen it from us, and then got revenge on those who had done it. Well, I'm not really sure how much revenge it was, it wasn't like I was the one who had set NERV on fire after killing off all of their EVAs. But I had helped make it happen.

Furthermore the boy, my so-called twin Patrick, had been captured and brought back to SEELE for what I was sure was going to be an unpleasant ending for him. I had expected that they'd just shoot him back at Tokyo-3, and while I didn't want to see anyone die, if anyone deserved that it was Patrick. Vance, I got the boy who got you, I got him pretty good.

None of this was very satisfactory for me however. Sure, I had my EVA back, but I was still living in the hollowed-out inside of a mountain like some mole, surrounded by people that were either weird, scary, or both. Where would I go now? I still had no home, no family. Just little ol' me and my EVA.

As I kept thinking of everything I tried to put in mind all of the people I had done this for, Dad, Vance, Jan, and all of those others at Second Branch. I tried to think about the happy times I had spent with all of them. But it was hard, hard because images and sounds from that last battle inside the GeoFront kept seeping into my brain. The screaming of Shinji Ikari over the audio when Kaworu had stabbed him with that big spear of his, was haunting. Then when Unit 08 was penetrated by that big blue tentacle of death. The pilot had died almost instantly, the boy named Kensuke, who was only trying to save Shinji. And finally seeing the green EVA piloted by the British girl get sliced to pieces. Well, I told myself, at least I was on the winning team. Otherwise maybe it would have been me who they'd be picking up off the GeoFront floor with a sponge. But I didn't feel good about it. I didn't feel good about it at all.

Finally dressing in something warm and getting out of my cabin I walked along the gangway searching for Victor, who was at least the one person here I could sort of rely on. He was standing at the end of the hallway close to the elevator bank.

"Welcome back," he said in a gruff voice.

"Where are they keeping the boy?" I asked him directly. I was in no mood for anything pleasant and had decided that I wanted answers.

"If you're meaning Patrick Forrestal, he's in a cell several decks below us."

"I want to see him."

Victor didn't at all seem surprised. "I thought you might."

The guard took me down the elevator and then to the security level where they kept Patrick. In front of his cell door there was another guard, who Victor motioned to and then the narrow steel door was opened up. The two of them waited outside as I went in.

The cell itself was part of two rooms, divided by a concrete and rock wall, both of which looked like it was dug into the mountain itself. There were no windows at all, only a single plexiglass wall facing the outside. There were about half a dozen moving security cameras facing both cells to keep an eye on things. The further cell was empty, but the near one had one inhabitant. Patrick was sitting there against the far wall looking out towards the front. He wore grey-colored prison pajamas, and looked cold and miserable. Good.

I just stood there in front of him, this boy who had given me so much trouble. Finally something horrible had happened to him, and while I was happy for at least some form of justice it didn't bring me any closer to knowing why he had done everything he had.

Patrick looked at me from where he was seated on the floor. He didn't move, but just spoke to me from there.

"Happy?"

"Oh," I replied, matching his sarcasm. "I'm ecstatic. I only wish it was you and not the other boy who had died." He grimaced a little. "Then that makes two of us."

This was driving me crazy, and I walked around in frustration, not sure if wanted to scream at him or just open the cell door and strangle him. Shaking my head to get my mind clear, I stepped up to the plastic wall. "Just tell me why you did it!"

"What, you mean NERV-2?"

"Yeah. Why did you blow it up like that? Why?"

He cocked his head a little. "Well, if you must know it might have had something to do with being lied to and being kept from your family, having your best friend killed, and then being tied up and thrown in a cell like this one for two weeks. After all of that and then hearing that Dad wanted to, you know, go and let the Angels bring the world to an end and all, the last thing I wanted was to let Dad have an EVA all of his own. I guess the EVA agreed with me."

Oh, God not this again. _"_ There you go again about the EVA! It's just a robot, you idiot!"

"And you call yourself a pilot. The one time she talks to you straight up and you freak out."

"That's not what happened!"

The boy stood up and then moved to the wall, putting himself now inches away from me. He looked at me intently, his gaze piercing inside. "So do you remember it, then? Before you blacked out?"

I hated it when he did that and I backed away from the glass. "Nothing, that's all! Nothing happened! I just blacked out!" But he knew, from that slight smile of his on his face. He knew about the ghost.

Before we could get any further the outside cell door opened. Inside came Chairman Kiel, being pushed in his chair by Piotr and followed by several guards. I hadn't checked in with the Chairman since I had returned, just not having the energy to deal with everything that had happened after my return to the fortress. In any case I was relieved that at least I wasn't in here alone with Evil Twin Boy behind the glass. As he wheeled the Chairman in, Piotr avoided looking at me, perhaps not wanting to give away what had happened before I left.

"Miss Forrestal," the Chairman called to me as he approached. "I need to speak to you."

"Yes, Grandfather?"

"Did you find our operation to recover the Evangelion to your liking?"

I smiled, at least pleasantly surprised someone appreciated me here. "I'm glad to have it back, although I don't know why we brought the fake pilot back" I answered, nodding to Patrick behind the glass.

 _"_ I'm gratified that we could return it to its rightful operators," he said to me as the guards fanned out around the prison room, "I do have one issue with you however and that is this: why did you disobey our orders during the recovery mission?"

"What do you mean? I thought I played it along pretty good."

"That you were able to gain the trust of those within the rogues in order to gain access to your EVA was commendable, but once in the EVA and when Unit 06 arrived you were instructed to attack the other NERV EVAs as they engaged Unit 06. Why did you not do so?"

Seriously? It was hard to take what the Chairman was telling me. "Why bother?" I told him. "Your pilot pretty much wiped everything out!" Which was true, as Weird Boy had pretty much laid waste to everything at NERV.

"That is not the point," the Chairman continued. "It was essential to the operation's success that you use the EVA to engage the other units and destroy them. EVA-04 was considered a friendly unit to them, any attacks you conducted would have had immediate success."

Frustrated with the unwarm reception I felt like I was not getting anywhere with this. "Look," I replied back as I worked to try and keep down my anger. "I just wanted my EVA back. I didn't sign up for shooting other kids in the back."

Unfortunately Kiel wasn't particularly happy with my responses. "You were instructed before you left to follow our orders _to the letter_."

"Hey, do you know what it was like to have to go through everything I did for the last week?" I argued. "I should get a freaking Academy Award for playing along like that, and it got you the EVA. Besides, your pilot pretty much creamed everything he ran into, having me out there would have just gotten in his way." Jeez, give me a break.

"I see that you feel that our commands are subject to your interpretation. It was important to our goals that NERV understand that EVA-04 was not to be trusted. It's not your position to judge this. If you wish to continue piloting her you must do as we say!"

Yeah, right. "Or what? You're going to get _another_ pilot? According to what Father told me I'm the only one who can really pilot it, you know."

For a small moment the Chairman was quiet, then he looked at me again, speaking with a grave voice. "Fortunately for me I have an alternative to dealing with a spoiled brat such as you." He then snapped his finger and pointed at me. From behind two of the guards that had come in the prison with him suddenly grabbed me by the arms.

I struggled as hard as I could but the men simply had too much strength and control over me. Panicked, I screamed for help but nearly as soon as I did so one of them put a cloth around my mouth and head and pulled it very tight, while the other one pushed me down on my knees. They then both put handcuffs on my hands behind me, binding me so tight it hurt.

What had just happened? Here I was the hero of the day, infiltrating the bad guy's lair and charming and tricking my way into getting my EVA back, and now suddenly I was bound and gagged. I feared for my life, in fact I don't remember a time when I wasn't more scared than I was right now, including the time I nearly got molested down below. I looked towards the prison cell and saw Patrick. He was now standing up against the glass, his eyes wide open in emotion. He clenched his fists and shouted at Kiel. "Hey! Don't hurt her!"

On the base of my neck I felt cold steel against my skin. A gun, pointed right at me. Something had gone horribly wrong and now I was going to die for it. My whole body shook and I felt tears streaming from eyes, tears from the fear, and tears from pain I now felt.

Kiel swiveled his wheelchair to face Patrick behind the glass. "If you wish no harm to come to your sister," the Chairman told him flatly, "you will do exactly as we say without any reluctance or resistance. Do you understand me, boy?"

Patrick looked at me and our eyes met, and perhaps for the first time I realized just what might really be going on. Then he returned his glance to Kiel. "Yeah, I get it" he spoke in a determined voice. Kiel then ordered Patrick to pilot Unit 04, using me as his security collateral.

"If you do not follow our orders precisely as we give them to you your sister will die," the Chairman instructed Patrick. "There will not be another warning. Is this understood?"

"Yes."

The Chairman then motioned to his guards. "Remove him from the cell." As they opened up the door to grab him, the two guards that were on me took off the handcuffs and pulled the gun away from my neck. While I was relieved to not be immediately executed, it didn't last long as my parka was stripped away from me and I was thrown into the empty cell.

Just as they were pushing me inside I could see Patrick as they pulled him away and towards the opening. He looked at me, not with anger or fear but with worry. I only got a glance before was dragged out of the prison but it only took one look from him to know how wrong I had been about everything.

* * *

 _Welcome to the next installment of_ The Other Side of Me _, and now we've gotten to the "good stuff" as it were. Most of you have read_ The Awakening _already and knew what was coming, but seeing it from Erin's perspective gives you a very different side of the battle and aftermath. She's quite conflicted between anger and conscience, annoyed with the strange boy that was intruding into her dreams but also feeling terrible about what she's doing with SEELE. Unfortunately she's found the answer she was looking for, and it wasn't at all what she expected._

 _Next installment in about 2-3 weeks. Enjoy!_


	13. Missing Piece

Not long after I got thrown in the prison cell I passed out, and when I found myself awakened again I was lying on a mattress at the back of the cell. My sweater and pants had been removed and I was now only wearing a dingy, paper-thin blue and grey colored shirt and pants: a prisoner's uniform. There was a pair of cheap slippers on the cement floor, and to my right there was a toilet and a sink, both made from metal, and that was all there was.

The shock of being tossed in here after nearly having my head blown off was still heavy with me, but was now combined with the emotions of everything that had transpired collapsing on top of my heart. It had all been a lie. SEELE didn't give a rat's ass about me, they just wanted my EVA and I had delivered it to them on a silver platter.

Needless to say I felt horrible. Even before going to Japan I was already having second thoughts about this whole arrangement and when I didn't exactly go through with the chairman's plan to slaughter the rest of the EVA pilots at Tokyo-3 they figured my usefulness had run out and now here I was: cold, abandoned, and alone. Well, not exactly alone.

Next to me was the boy who I tricked to get the EVA, the one I had hated so much for so long. I had been happy to see him from the other side of the glass, to see him isolated and suffering, only to end up joining him a few moments afterward. Keel had threatened to kill me if Patrick didn't do as he said, which meant that Patrick was important to them and I was important to Patrick. The conclusion of that was obvious, even to me.

But now the truth had come to me too late. Silly, naïve me had entrusted the adults around me with my care and well-being and here I ended up, buried deep within a mountain with nothing to lean on. My life was over, and while I was still breathing there wasn't much hope for me here at all.

Daddy, I screamed inside of my mind, Daddy what happened? Why did you leave me here? Why didn't you _tell_ me anything? Did you think I couldn't handle the truth? Or were you just darker than you let on to me? For years I had trusted him despite feeling rejected much of my childhood, but he was gone now and here I was in a cave made up of stone and plexiglass, shivering to death.

Still stunned and feeling weak, I wondered over to the far right wall and slid down to the floor, my head between my knees as the tears came. Some good crying would do now, I thought, but I couldn't see any way out of here.

The lights never changed in our prison, so I had no way of knowing if it was morning, noon or evening. No one ever came to check on us, there was only the motion of the security cameras that swiveled as they faced the plexiglass wall, occasional meals in carboard boxes that consisted of bread wafers and cups of water that were mechanically shoved through a small slot inside of the wall, and muffled noises from the cell next to me. Patrick wasn't saying anything to me either, and I guess I couldn't blame him.

I was ashamed of myself and angry at everything. I had made choices to get into this mess but I had also been led here too. I was the Screwed-Over Princess, useful only as a means to an end. Some good EVA did me.

This was rock bottom for me, literally it seemed as here I was surrounded by rock at nearly the bottom of whatever this mountain was. There was nowhere to go, no one to save me, and no time left. I was about to become one of those faceless statistics of how many people were done away with by other nasty people throughout history.

There was however one matter that I had to face and that was the boy next to me, the boy who now was my only companion in this stony grey icebox. But what could I say? Was he really the brother he had been telling me he was since our first encounter? Or was all of this still part of the big lie, yet another string of horrible things I had been entwined with? I didn't want to trust in anyone or anything anymore, not even myself.

Tired from either worry or cold I fell asleep leaning against the cell wall. When I woke up I was still against a wall, but on the other side of the cell, the one adjoining Patrick's space, as somehow during the night I had moved myself across. There was a presence right in front of me and I looked up. He was standing just a few inches away from me, wearing black pants and a white shirt. Tall, handsome, with dark hair and dark eyes, he smiled at me with that easy grin I knew too well. I gasped in recognition, thinking I must be dead already and here Vance was to take me to Heaven.

"Vee?" I said to him, sniffling as I spoke.

"Hey, Tiger," he replied in a soft voice.

"Am I…"

"Don't worry," the ghost whispered, "everything's gonna be okay now."

"But…"

Before I could say anything else the image of Vance disappeared. Seeing him gone, I was now even more despondent. I just pushed my head into my knees and whimpered. Seeing Vance was just too much for me, even if it was only in my dreams.

Another voice came from the other side of the wall. "Erin? Can you hear me?" I really didn't want to talk to anyone else right now, so I just ignored him and kept silent. Even so Patrick was quite persistent.

"Erin?"

"What do _you_ want?" I angrily shot back.

"What's your favorite color?"

Seriously? "What the hell kind of question is that?"

"Do you want me to guess?" Patrick replied in a warmer tone. "I guess it's…green!"

"Ha. My eyes are green. That's so obvious."

"But it also happens to be my favorite color too."

"Liar," I told him. "You're just saying that!" Patrick continued despite my hostility. "Okay, try this then. Your favorite number is...Five!"

"Idiot! Everyone's favorite is either one, five or ten."

"Not seven? Lots of people choose seven. So five it is, then? Let's try another one," he said, continuing his guessing game. "Your favorite animal is…a Tiger!"

I had to admit he was getting accurate at this. "You guessed that!"

"No, really. Do you know how I know?"

"How?"

"What are the colors of your plug suit?"

"Orange with black stripes!"

"Am I right?"

"Well," I conceded, "okay, but you could have still guessed that."

For the next few minutes Patrick continued to ask me a series of questions about my own likes and preferences, providing his guesses to the answers before I answered anything. Not only could he guess my favorite foods with dead-on accuracy but he guessed nearly everything about me he could offer up. Did he know all of this in advance, was this all part of the trick of gaining my confidence? I still wasn't sure, but there was something else he knew, something that no one else in the world would know other than myself.

"The ghost in the entry plug," he told me. "The one that came to you the day you blacked out. Erin, I saw it too."

He had tried to tell me before at Tokyo-3, but I was so angry then that I didn't want to give him any clue as to what really happened, but he knew, he knew every detail. There was no avoiding it now. It wasn't just that there was a link between the two of us, but was why that link had been made. We both had something in common with the EVA and there's only one way that would have been possible.

"Now do you believe me?" Patrick finally asked. His voice was calm and sure.

I couldn't deny it anymore that there was something between us, something strong. "To be honest," I confessed to him, choking up as I tried to keep myself from crying ".they told me that you had some way of linking with EVA using drugs, that's why I saw stuff in my head!"

"Do you still think that's true?"

"No, I…I guess not now," I confessed, feeling horribly anguished.. "But...Oh, I'm just so confused!"

"Take it easy," Patrick said in a reassuring voice. "I'm not going to bite!"

Taking deep breaths, I tried to calm myself down more as the weight of what I had discovered fully started to hit me. "Um...where do I start?"

"Just start at the beginning," he said. "What really happened in that last EVA test?"

"I blacked out!"

"Before then."

"I was..I was scared to death, and there was this...cloudy, skeleton thing that came inside of the plug. It came right up to the throne and then...it was trying to tell me something."

"What did it say?"

What did it say to me? I struggled to remember it, that dark-toned howl that ran through my mind. Like a leaf in the wind I managed to catch it. "it said...'Find the other!' And then I blacked out."

"That was it? Do you remember anything else?"

"No! I mean, really no! I just remember waking up in the hospital later. It must have been a while because my hair was all long. I'm sorry, they told me not to say stuff like that to anyone else!"

"When did you wake up?"

"It was two months ago, I was in this hospital and they kept me locked in my room. Then one day this old guy in a wheelchair comes in."

"Chairman Kiel, the same guy that put you in here?"

"Yes, only he was a lot nicer that first time. Insisted that I call him 'grandfather.'" I told him. "Anyway, he then tells me all about what happened at Second Branch, and before in Tokyo-3. They said that you did all of it."

Patrick sighed. "I guess I can't really blame you for being upset. There wasn't any way SEELE was going to give you the whole story."

"After that they took me here to the mountain," I explained further, "and then they started coaching me on how I could get my EVA back, by going to Tokyo-3 and stealing it."

"So that whole emotional thing you went through when they brought you into NERV that first day, that was just an act?"

"Well," I admitted, "actually that was pretty much how I reacted when the Chairman told me about NERV-2 the first time."

"I'm sorry," Patrick said in a mournful tone. "I guess I never considered what you might be feeling after all that. I spent a lot of time pushing everyone else to find you and I had sort of hoped that you'd know who I was and what really happened already."

"I guess I'm the one who should be sorry," I told him. "It's just that I was so angry when I found out! I just wanted to do anything I could!"

"Do you believe me about Dad?" asked Patrick. "I mean, I know your relationship with him was a bit different from mine. It must be hard to convince you of what he was doing."

I sighed hard. "I...I don't know what to think. Dad was nice, you know. I mean, when he was around he always made you feel good, always had presents and treats and stuff. But there were a lot of times when he kind of had another side to his personality, especially when he was on the computer as long as he was. A lot of times he didn't even come home at night and I was all by myself in the house. I felt like I was an orphan sometimes."

"I know the feeling," Patrick commiserated. "At least you had him there, for me it was months at a time before I'd even see him. Every time he came up to uncle's cabin he'd tell me 'I'm doing something important for the world but one day we can be together' and I got that for years and years. Then when I finally got to go to Second Branch he wasn't even interested in talking to me. It's almost like he wanted me to be pissed off. He never mentioned you at all and then when I did finally find out he told me to forget all about you!"

Hearing that from Patrick shocked me, to know that Dad treated him like that and didn't tell him about me. "What?! Why... _why_ would he do that?"

"Something about Mom and then also what went on with you with the EVA," he went on to explain. "I know that he had serious issues with Shinji's dad over EVA, like he blamed him for Mom getting taken inside. Anyway, I guess that would change anyone having something like that happen." Patrick paused and there was a long silence between us. "I'm really sorry you had to go through this. I only wish they would have found you sooner."

"Well, just one more stupid thing that happened. Hey," I called out, suddenly feeling energetic now that I had someone to at least talk to. "Who's that blue-haired girl?"

"Who, Rei?" Patrick asked. "Did you see her at the GeoFront?"

"No. I saw her in my dreams."

Patrick was a bit hesitant. "What did you see, exactly?"

"There was this one time where she's standing in front of this sort of big fish tank where she was? You know, with LCL inside? It was really creepy, there were body parts and stuff inside the tank! Was that real?"

"Yes!" Patrick exclaimed. "That's the Dummy Plug Plant in the very bottom of the GeoFront."

"I remember seeing that, and I remember that same girl standing in front and talking to you."

"You saw that?"  
"Yeah, I don't remember what you were saying though."

"One of my more stupid attempts to get her to go out with me," said Patrick. "Did you see anything else?"

"All different stuff," I told him, relating back several of the experiences I had thought were just dreams or feedback from the EVA. "You inside the EVA, you and other pilots at NERV. Then there was this time when you went out in the snow. Things like that."

"So this link between us really does goes two-way!"  
"Yeah, um, sometimes a little too much!"

"Like what?"

"Well," the feeling of being kissed by Patrick's girl was still something strong in my mind "...let's just say that I know how much you like your girlfriend."

Patrick chuckled a bit when he heard that. "How..Umm, oh my that's awkward! But wait! If you could see and feel all of that, then why weren't you convinced from before?"

"I told you I was so angry I didn't know what to think! I just wanted you gone! And then I get all of this stuff in my head from you and it just drove me crazy!"

"Did you tell anyone else?"

"Yeah, as part of the training to go into NERV they had me speak to this German woman here. She wrote down all of these visions I got. When I asked her what they were she said they were just residual psychological experiences from your link to EVA. I didn't realize until now it was all really going on!"

"Oh, no," he realized, "they were using the link between you and me to spy on NERV!"

"There was something else," I told him. "Something really scary." I went further and told him about the time I had the nightmare where I felt my face melting off. I still remembered how horrifying that felt, so strongly that I wondered if that was real or just a nightmare. Patrick also unfortunately confirmed that too, was something which was relayed to me through our link, and described the full incident to me. While piloting Unit 04 he was defending Tokyo-3 from a SEELE attack, but one of SEELE's N2 warheads had penetrated through their defenses. Having no choice he extended the EVA's AT Field and absorbed the bomb. Everything I had felt that one night, including how my entire face felt on fire, actually happened to him.

"But your face," I asked Patrick, "you look okay! What happened?"

"This is my replacement face," he told me. "Remember the 'fish tank'? The one with the body parts?"

"Yeah?"

"They used some of those to grow my skin back," he told me. "Courtesy of Rei and a very eccentric French scientist named Foch."

I gasped as he said the name. There was another survivor of Second Branch besides me! "I know that guy!" and suddenly I didn't feel quite so alone anymore.

* * *

Over the next few days Patrick and I got to know each other much better. Ironically being stuck in a prison together gave us nothing else to do but talk, and we spent hours and hours going over each other's stories and trying to figure out how we ended up here. I asked Patrick to tell me his side of it, still being unsure of who or what he was but wanting to learn as much as I could about him. He gladly indulged me, starting from the beginning.

"So you grew up in the mountains?" I asked him after hearing his own story. "I mean, since you were a baby?"

"I guess I did. To be fair I don't remember much about being that small, but it was always me and uncle and in that small cabin we had up in Big Bear."

"What about mom and dad?"

"They would come up to see me. Occasionally. I mean, one or the other would show up I guess every so often. I always like it when mom showed up."

"You remember her then? Mom" I asked it like an innocent question, but to me this was the true test: was he really my twin? If he could answer about Mom the way I remembered her, that would be all I really needed to know if this was all true.

"Honestly it's been so long now I don't recall too much," Patrick recalled. "I can't even imagine what she looked like anymore. I mean she had blonde hair and wore glasses, and she seemed very, very smart. I knew that much."

From my own memories of Mom I knew at least this much was true. "What else do you remember?"

"She's spend time with me just playing and hanging around. She kept this little garden outside of the cabin and it was always my job to water the plants when she was away. I remember not wanting her to ever go away, like I'd grab onto her leg and try to keep her from leaving once." Patrick sighed deeply, then continued on.

"She always liked wildflowers. I think after she died I still kept trying to water the plants, but eventually they died too."

The wildflowers! I remembered that myself, and how much mom liked to garden. "What did you do when mom died?"

"Cry a lot," he said flatly. "I felt horrible. I didn't like living with uncle much and Mom was like the one bright spot in my life then. Then she was gone. Uncle didn't really ever tell me how she died, only that it was some kind of accident."

"But dad keep seeing you after that."

"Yeah, he'd come by maybe every one or two months or so. Less when I got older, but basically he'd always do the same thing: bring me some sort of toy, then talk to me about how he was working so hard and then one day I'd come and live with him. All such bullshit. I can't believe it was like this. When I found out about you I always wondered what the hell really happened. Dad was, how shall we say, very uncooperative about the issue."

"So he didn't tell you either, did he?"

"No, it wasn't until you showed up that I even knew you existed. Well, there were the a year ago they started. It was always like you were in the entry plug, although back then I didn't know what that was. You?"

"For me it was the cabin!" I told him. "I could see everything, just kinda blurry and stuff but I knew where that was!'

"So do you remember going there at all? I mean, you were actually there once."

"No, well sorta," I recalled, still trying to piece together that fuzzy memory I first had when I came out of the coma. "It was kind of weird and I wasn't even sure if that was real. Wondering through some sort of forest and then there I was. But was that really me?"

"Yes! Yes it was! I remember when I first saw you, and you were pretty freaked out."

"But how did I get all the way out there?"

"Absolutely no idea. But once uncle saw you show up he tazered you and then told me start packing. Like I said, you were pretty hysterical. Screaming out 'what's alive is dead, what's dead is alive' and like that."

I leaned my head back against the wall, wondering about everything I was now hearing. "Geez, I didn't realize. I don't remember any of that. I just remember waking up in that hospital, then finding out that Second Branch was….gone."

"Yeah." He said in a softer voice.

"Patrick, what really happened? I mean with Second Branch, and Dad and all."

"A lot of crap. God I just hate the whole thing, even now. So stupid."

It was then that Patrick told me the rest of his tale. Somehow I had made it to his cabin and after encountering him for the first time I had fainted. Not long afterwards my dad's security people had tracked me there and took Patrick to Second Branch in order to take my place as Unit 04's pilot. Right up until that moment in the mountains neither Mom nor Dad had ever told him that I existed.

When Patrick arrived at Second Branch, everyone kept their distance from him and no one talked to him about me at all, except for two people: Jo and Vance. Patrick had met Jo just once as he was given a physical exam, and at first Jo didn't tell him anything. He was persistent in questioning her however and managed to get out of her more about me. Everyone else at Second Branch was too scared to talk about me with Patrick, and to him it seemed like I had never existed at all. That made Patrick angry enough to confront Dad about what really happened, and Dad then told him to forget about me and get on with piloting.

I couldn't believe dad could be so cold like that! Was I nothing to him after my whole life? It seemed difficult to believe, but the anger in Patrick's voice when he talked about Dad made it pretty clear they didn't get along. I could only think that maybe I was the reason why.

"Dad…Dad lied to me about Mom, didn't he?" I blurted out.

"Yeah," Patrick answered in a somber tone. "Yeah, he did."

"But does that mean…does that mean she's not really dead?"

He sighed. "I'm not even sure what to call it. EVA plays by its own rules, pretty much. But if you're able to feel me, to see from inside, she's the reason why."

When I heard that my whole body shook. The ghost I had been so terrified of since I saw it, how it was able to just reach out to me, and how it had despite its horrifying presence seemed so familiar, there was a reason why this was so. Why had the EVA seemed so comfortable all of the times I had piloted it? How did I know the EVA was a she? I knew because I knew the EVA itself.

I had somehow always felt that the EVA was a part of me, from when I first began to pilot it, but I was a part of it too. Now I knew why, I knew why this was true. The puzzle was finally complete, and the picture of what was built was at once horrible and beautiful. Mom was alive, in some sort of way, and she had always been there. I don't know why the ghost had suddenly come but I knew why there was a link between Patrick and myself: Mom, or what she had become, was bringing us closer together.

I leaned against the wall, pressing myself against as I spoke to Patrick. The walls to my sense of reality were shaking, as it seemed like everything I knew about myself and my life were just completely wrong.

"So she's inside the EVA then? She's the ghost that I saw?"

"Yeah and that's true for just about all of the units. At least all of ours, I can't speak for the Harpies."

" _Harpies_?"

"The Mass Production Series, the ones that SEELE uses. That's what we call them. No souls in those things, just the dummy plug. But they're monsters…"

I thought about when Dad told me mom was gone, remembering that he never could bring himself to say that she actually died. No wonder, if it was like this. But why was it like this? Why did she need to be part of EVA? There were so many questions just coming to my brain.

"Did Dad know what was this was? What with Mom and EVA and all?'

"I think he did, I think that's why he got kinda…bad." Patrick was silent for a little while and then said "he didn't tell me much, and when he did tell me it was pretty blunt. He blamed Commander Ikari for a lot of what happened with Mom and all, but I think he pretty much just hated everything in the end. He told me once, 'The World doesn't…"

"…deserve to live," I finished for him.

"You knew?"

Gulping with emotion, I confessed to Patrick. "Dad had these times he would just be nasty," I said. "I mean…I think he tried to be good with me at times. I really think he did, and I just wanted him to be his good self so much but it was just so hard to reach him. For so long he was my whole world and now to find out how much he was hiding from me…I'm so stupid!" I cried out. The tears came again, I felt horrible for it and kept telling myself not to cry anymore but I couldn't stop it.

"Don't say that," Patrick consoled me. "How were you to know?"

"Because I saw you! I saw your whole life!" I shouted. "I saw it when you were living in the cabin, then I saw it when you were piloting EVA, and then I saw it when you were with your friends. I even saw you fall in love! I felt it too when you fell in love. I saw and felt everything and I just kept ignoring it! Instead I came there to get revenge on you!"

"Congratulations," he deadpanned. "You got it."

I scoffed, but the realization that helped bring him into his mess was heavy on my shoulders. "I massively screwed up," I said to Patrick. "I just let these people use me, and then I lied about everything when I went to Tokyo-3. I tricked you to get into the EVA and I just stood by when your friends…when your friends got killed…"

"It's alright. I got the idea."

"I didn't know they were going to take you with us! They never told me that before I left. I'm so sorry! It's my fault you ended up like this."

Shockingly, Patrick wasn't at all reluctant to speak to me even after my confession. "Well, think of it this way. Ever since I found out you existed, all I ever wanted to do was to meet you and talk to you. Now I can do it."

"But it should have to be like this," I mourned, looking around at our prison walls. "We're both done for here."

"Better late than never."

* * *

With little else to do Patrick and I spent the next few days just talking about anything and everything that was between us. While he told me of all of his adventures in Japan with EVA once he became her pilot, I told him everything I could think of about my own story, starting from the beginning.

It was painful again when the topic changed to Vance. When Patrick had first come to Second Branch, Vee befriended him nearly immediately and was the only one who told Patrick the real story behind what Dad was doing, at least as much as he knew. The two of them spent months together as they trained and at least according to Patrick became very close.

But something got in the way of their friendship, something awful.

Dad had sent both Vance and Patrick to Japan along with their EVAs to train against the more experienced Japanese team. Unknown to Patrick, Vance was on a secret mission, which was to steal a special engine the Japanese had captured from a defeated Angel. During one of the training sessions Vee and his EVA tried to take the S2 engine while it was being loaded onto an aircraft. Unfortunately, Rei got to the S2 before Vance could reach it and Vance was seconds away from killing her before Patrick intervened.

Patrick was forced to turn on Vance and shot him with the EVA's weapon, allowing Rei to get away. He died not long afterwards, still fighting in the EVA to keep from being captured by the Japanese.

It was hard hearing the story, but I knew from the sorrowful tone of Patrick's voice how hard it was for him to be forced into the choice between the girl he loved and his best friend. As he told me the whole tale, I could tell how much Patrick cared for Vance, and how much he had helped him adjust to living among other people while at Second Branch. For the short time that they lived together they had become brothers in a very real sense. I also knew Vance, though, and I knew that Vance was capable of and somehow none of this really surprised me. After Patrick told me everything, I recollected to him about that one time in the desert during our date, and about how I cried when Vance hunted down the rabbits. Patrick had done more than I was able to, he had stopped him but it came at a horrible price.

The worst part was hearing about what happened afterwards. Vance and his father had been set up by Dad to fail. My father had wanted Vance to die, and he had wanted Patrick to be mad about it, angry enough to use Unit 04 and eventually attack Tokyo-3 itself in revenge. The very worst part was that Vance's uncanny ability to pilot the EVA so well didn't come naturally, it came because Dad was giving him medicine to help him sync, medicine that was eating his brain at the same time. The headaches and dizzy spells that Vance would often get came from that. That day in the hospital, the day of my eventful sync test with Unit 04 where I encountered the ghost, I saw the medicine that he was injected with and that's what was killing him. He had been dying the whole time he had known me.

Did Vance know he was going to die? I wasn't sure, something about him always seemed unusually determined, so maybe he did know and went along despite this. But Dad knew, there's no way that he didn't.

Part of me wanted to run away from what Patrick had told me, and just rack it up to yet another attempt to control or sway me. SEELE had said that Patrick was a spy, and a very dangerous one, and that NERV and the Alliance would try to win me over to their side by offering me things I couldn't resist. But I had been there as Vance was slowly poisoned, and as Dad had increasingly become further and further isolated and angry. I had seen things with my own eyes that I hadn't been able to put together until now, about the EVAs and what we were doing. I always knew that something seemed wrong about my life, and that there was a part of me missing. Now that other Side of me was sitting on the other side of a wall in this dark place, and the puzzle of my life so far had been made complete.

Did I still have doubts? Maybe, but the clues to my life fit too well for Patrick to be just making it up. Here he was too, like me he had trusted others and found himself at short end of the stick, lonely and abandoned. But I was here with him and that seemed to make all of the difference. He didn't act sad, and in fact despite our circumstances he seemed downright happy to be right next to me. He asked me so many questions about my life and I told him everything that I could think of, literally everything I could remember about the last fourteen years. We belonged together and the universe had brought us together, albeit in probably the worst way possible.

We continued to talk for hours and hours until both of us became so exhausted that we couldn't think of anything else. Patrick got sleepy and then drifted off, leaving me leaning against the cold wall of the cell as he rested. My mind sifted through everything that I had learned, my whole world had expanded and changed, and not entirely for the better.

"Daddy, why?" I tried to project my thoughts to him, as if he would hear me some way. "Why lie to me so much? Why keep me away from Patrick for all of my life, knowing what it was doing to me? Why did you hurt Vance like that and do so many other ugly things, all over the EVA?" My mind couldn't come up with an explanation that made sense.

My father seemed at times like a good man but distant and unconnected. He had to look good, that was for sure, he was always meticulous about his appearance and his reputation and never took criticism very well. EVA meant something to him, something important enough to sacrifice his own family for. From it all I felt horrible, like I had been cast off as an unneeded appendage once I could no longer pilot EVA.

Did he ever love me at all? I wondered, but knew there were times, small moments shared between us too when maybe he did, but it was always contested with EVA. It had never been what he should have been between my father and I, and I had spent a lifetime of trying the bridge the gap between us to no avail. I knew how much my heart had just wanted all of my Dad at once, but I could never catch him.

Now Dad was gone, caught up in the storm he unleased and taken away to parts unknown, and I was left here all alone. Well, not all alone as it turns out and I suppose if there was a silver lining to any of this it was that I was finally together with Patrick, the other half of me that was missing for so long. At least I could take solace in that, at that the end my puzzle was complete and we were together for whatever lie ahead of us, but I feared for the worst.

* * *

With nothing but time on our hands, my questions for Patrick expanded to anything regarding Evangelion I could find out, as it seemed like there was just so much more to this project that what little I knew of it while piloting at Second Branch. Patrick had come into EVA just as the Japanese were pitted in combat versus the long-awaited Angels, and while he had not fought the Angels himself, he had learned much about it after moving in with the Japanese team.

There were a total of seventeen Angels according to Patrick, of which the first, code-named Adam, was the one responsible for the Antarctica disaster in 1999 that wiped out half of Earth's population, tilted the planet's axis and started all of this mess. Nearly of the others attacked Tokyo for a six-month period last year, one by one with each Angel more powerful than the one before but still ultimately defeated by one or more of NERV's Evangelions. It had cumulated in a final battle at the end of the year, where an Angel disguised as a boy named Kaworu Nagisa took control over Unit 02 and tried to contact the Second Angel, which was held deep underneath Tokyo-3. Unit 01 had stopped it by killing the boy-Angel, literally crushing him in her hands. I recognized the name, as it was the same name as the silver-haired weird boy I ran into in the EVA cages inside of the mountain before I was sent to Tokyo-3. Was he the same boy, back from the dead? It might have been, which would explain how creepy he had felt that one time I spoke to him.

Since then all of NERV's battles had been not against Angels, but against other Evangelions instead, as SEELE had attacked NERV in order to start their own version of Third Impact. Patrick had been there at Tokyo-3 when it almost happened, and had been fighting the Mass Production Series of EVAs, or "harpies" ever since.

"Tell me about the others?" I asked him about the Evangelion pilots he worked with. "How did you meet them?"

Patrick's voice perked up a bit as he described his encounters with the Japanese pilots, especially one in particular. "I saw them first around October of last year, when Double-V and I went to Japan. They put us in the same classroom for about a week so we could interact with them. That was when I met Rei for the first time."

"Oh?"  
"Yeah, it wasn't really smooth at first. Back then she was really, really introverted, but I remember just seeing her there sitting in the school hallway and reading, and there was sort of this really peaceful, gentle look on her face just like a little child. I think I was on the hook even then."

I have to admit I was genuinely curious. "How long did it take her to go out with you?"

"About a week. I sort of confessed to Shinji but anyway Shinji somehow got Rei to show up when I asked her out on a date. Kind of bumpy but it was fun, and I got her to open up a bit. Fed her lots of ice cream."

"You did that?!" I exclaimed, remembering one time when Vance stuffed me with so much ice cream that I got the giggles.

"Vance recommended it. Said Ice cream was the cure for ice queens."

Typically Vance. "He said that?! That bastard! I wasn't an Ice Queen!"

"Maybe he was just trying to warm you up too," Patrick quipped. "Anyway, it worked like a charm on her. But then things got so fucked up and then I didn't see her again until all hell broke loose at the end of last year. Once I got back to Japan I just keep trying at it until she finally decided I was okay."

I was very curious now, as I had seen this girl several times in my visions as part of our link and she always seemed very mysterious. "What's she like? I mean when she's not piloting or whatever?"

"Incredible," he told me with a cheerful tone in his voice. "Really beautiful, very gentle, super smart. A bit awkward at times: she grew up inside the labs at Tokyo-3 and so she didn't really meet 'normal' people until more recently, so there's still a bit of adjusting she does to fit in with the others. But it's really fun watching her do that, and discovering all of these new things."

"And I'm sure you don't mind the kissing parts too, right?"

Patrick laughed hard. "Oh, yes! Oh, man I really miss that right about now." He was quiet for a bit after that, then told me in a lower voice. "Not sure if she'll take me back after all of this mess," he said. "But I can't see myself ever being without her."

I knew that feeling all too well. "You gave up a lot to try and help me," I told him.

"I did, and what could I do, you know? I mean Rei warned me about this, and so did Mari, but I just saw that look on your face and I had to whatever you needed me to do to help."

"I'm sorry I tricked you then," I told Patrick.

"But you still needed my help, yes? You just didn't really know it then."

"I did," I confessed to him. "Not that this helps us much now."

My brother was, despite everything we now faced, encouraging. "All I can say is don't give up hope. Don't know how or why, but somehow you'll make it out of this."

* * *

We're now at the pinnacle of the story, where the twins are re-united and beginning to get in sync with each other. This particularly chapter is fairly dialogue- and narrative-heavy, but we will start the downward slide with the next chapter and things will begin to pickup speed from there.

Events outside of writing are still getting in the way of consistent production at the keyboard, so I'd expect to see the next chapter in 3+ weeks. Still on target for a 20 chapter story done by Summer. Stay tuned.


	14. Escape

The time that we spent in the cells seemed to go by endlessly, the only things changing were that we received meals on a regular basis that were always the same thing: water and near-stale bread served in disposable Styrofoam , we  
spent the days talking to each other, both of us bringing up what we knew of our own lives to tell the other. I felt like after however long we were in the prison that I really knew Patrick as well as I could, and that he knew me just as well. But  
it seemed like we'd never get out of there.

Things finally changed when I woke to the flickering lights of my cell. Earlier I had fallen asleep as I usually did, against the wall I shared with Patrick's cell, and the sudden flashing of the interior lights had surprised me awake. Hearing movement  
close by, I stood up and pressed myself against the plexiglass of the front wall of the cell to get a better view of what was happening.

A man in a guard's uniform rushed inside our holding area and went to the front of Patrick's cell. Patrick had also woken up and recognized the man immediately, conversing with him in hushed Japanese. Man, who looked Japanese with short black hair and  
a muscular build, entered a code and the door to Patrick's cell immediately opened, Patrick himself nearly jumping outside as soon as the door swung with a woosh.

This new Japanese guy definitely was not one of the SEELE guards, given by how warm he was received by Patrick once the two of them stood together. As they whispered the voice of another man was heard down the hallway, a voice that I thought I knew.

The first man made motions to leave the prison while Patrick argued with him, and it was becoming obvious that what they were discussing was me. The spy or whoever he was looked at me sternly and then at Patrick, as he was impatient to get out of the  
prison we were in while Patrick frantically tried to persuade him to at least release me from my cell.

"You're not going to just leave her in there, are you?" Patrick said to the agent in English. The larger man smirked at my brother. "She's the one who put you in here, Patrick," he replied in heavily accented English. After hearing the agent say that  
about me, any remaining hopes that I had about getting out of here were dashed on the rocks, as this agent was from NERV and there was no way he was going to let me go after what happened.

"You can't just leave her here!" pleaded Patrick, "She's dead if we leave her behind!"

"Patrick," the agent spoke to him in a more serious tone. "do you know what actually happened at Tokyo-3?"

My brother put his foot down in front of the agent, determined to at least fight for me. "I know that something really bad happened to Kensuke and Mari, and I know that they think I had something to do with it. Look, Mr. Kaji," he called the agent by  
his name, "it doesn't matter. Yes, Erin tricked me to get the EVA and we both know it but they lied to her and now she knows everything. She's not going to be on their side anymore, otherwise they wouldn't have put her in here!"

"Or this is another way for them to gain your confidence…" he said skeptically.

"Fine," Patrick declared. He then walked to the front of my cell and turned towards the agent. "If she doesn't go, _I_ don't go!"

As much as I wanted to get out of that cell I couldn't let Patrick throw away his only chance to escape. For me the other shoe had finally dropped, and my punishment for all of those awful things that I had done and those good things I hadn't done had  
all come home.

"It's okay," I called to Patrick. He turned around to face me, looking at me with sadness as I tried to dissuade him from letting me stop his getaway attempt. "Just leave me here. That boy," I sadly thought of the young Japanese boy with glasses that  
was killed during Unit 06's raid on the Geo Front. "That boy's dead because of me. I…" I stuttered, emotions gripping me as I confessed to Patrick how I really felt. "…I deserve it."

But Patrick didn't give up on me, and with his face in a very determined expression he pivoted back to Kaji and once more began to argue with him. Then from outside of the prison came again the voice of the second man, now practically shouting in English.

"What's the holdup?!" After hearing his voice again I realized that I knew who it belonged to.

Kaji replied out the doorway. "Our escapee apparently doesn't want to go just yet,"

"He's always stubborn like that," the voice called back and inside walked another man in a SEELE's guard uniform, only I knew this who he was. It was Victor.

I'll admit that once Victor came I felt a lot more relief if not outright surprise. Victor was my one companion here at the fortress that I could at least trust. To know that he was working with the man helping Patrick escape could only mean one thing:  
Victor was himself a spy. There was however one further revelation about Victor that would really change everything I had thought I understood up until now.

As Victor entered the room Patrick turned around and then suddenly froze in place on the sight of him, his face becoming pale white in shock. Victor himself looked right at Patrick and spoke to him in a very familiar way.

"Hello, Lad," he said to him calmly. "Long time, no see."

It took Patrick a few seconds to get anything out, but when he did answer it was like a glass wall had been shattered, for both him and for me. "U-u-uncle? What the HELL?!"

Victor, the closest thing to a friend and protector that I had in this cold and lonely place, was the same uncle that had kept Patrick with him his whole life up in the California mountains. Here I was thinking about how I was so alone and abandoned and  
yet during all this time there was someone watching over me after all.

Uncle Victor ignored Patrick for the moment and turned to Kaji, the Japanese agent. "We've got about thirty-five seconds to get out of here…"

"He won't go without out her," Kaji protested, "but considering that she stole the EVA…"

Undeterred Victor walked straight to my cell door and keyed in the lock code, releasing the door locks to my cell. The plexiglass door swung open and I leaped right out of the cell. Now on solid ground outside the walls, I was finally free and took a  
deep breath.

I looked up at Victor, my _Uncle_ Victor, with a new sense of hope and gratitude. "Thank you," was all I could say. He didn't reply except to nod his head in acknowledgement.

There were now so many questions I had but time, which had flowed so slowly while we were in the cells, was now racing in front of us. But there was something that I had to do, and I had to do it right now. Standing in front of me was Patrick, his face  
in a mixture of expressions of happiness and of nervousness. Now unfettered, he wasn't sure what he should do but I made it easy for him, bounding to him with my arms wide open and throwing them around him. I held him as tightly against me as I could,  
and his own arms squeezed me with all of his own strength. Taking another deep breath, I buried my head in his chest, just wanting him to hold me right there and then. My missing piece, the emptiness inside of me that had felt so wrong all of my life  
had just been found once and for all.

"Finally together," my uncle said in a soft voice as Kaji and him watched us embrace.

The Japanese agent was still very skeptical of me. "Can we trust her?" he asked Uncle Victor. Patrick, still holding me in his arms, turned around and provided a defiant answer. "I'll bet my life on it!"

"I've been listening in on their conversations," said my uncle to the agent, "and I believe we _can_ trust her. Besides, somehow this isn't going to work unless they're both in the unit together."

Patrick and I were still perplexed by this very dramatic turn of events. "Uncle, what's the _hell's_ going on?" Patrick asked. "Why are _you_ here?"

"No time for that now. Get out and follow me." Uncle then turned and ran outside of the cell, with the three of us following him. I took Patrick's hand as we hurried down the hallway that was deep down in the lower levels of the fortress. Silently scurrying  
down the corridor, the group of us watched from a hiding place in the stone walls as two guards came down the hallway. The pair of security men looked at the cell door and saw that it was closed, then after a long glance continued along their way.  
Once the coast was clear we bounded out and silently the group of us snuck down until we reached a bank of elevators. Uncle Victor shooed us in, and then closed the elevator door and keyed the STOP button.

"That buys us three minutes," he told us as we all stood in the elevator. I could see Patrick, his hand still in mine, fuming with frustration. Uncle of course could read him quite well.

"This isn't a college lecture," he said to Patrick as he anticipated his argument, "If you've got something to say, now is good." Patrick promptly blew up at him. "Father told me that the UN army took you!"

"You _really_ believed what your father told you?" uncle chided. "I thought you could do much better than that."

"Fine," replied Patrick, still angry. "Obviously not. But what's really going on here?" Uncle just smirked at him. "It's just another puzzle, lad. You figure it out."

"Uncle, be serious!" screamed my brother. "Just fucking tell me for once, will you?"

Back in the cells Patrick had told me that he didn't get along that well with his uncle, but I had no idea it was this hostile between them. "Were you two always like this?" I asked Patrick.

"Worse, usually,"

"Two minutes, thirty seconds," Uncle counted down.

"Alright, alright!" yelled Patrick impatiently. "You were preparing me for EVA when I was growing up, that's clear now."

"No," said Victor. "I was preparing you for what you'll be doing in the next few minutes, EVA is just the means to that end."

Patrick started with the interrogation. "You knew about Erin."

"Go on…"

"and...you knew about SEELE and NERV and the UN and the Alliance and all that."

"Okay, go on..."

"and...are you like a _spy_ or something?"

Uncle Victor smirked at him. "Something like that."

"So let me get this straight then," Patrick said to Uncle, his voice increasing in volume and intensity as his grip on his anger came loose. "You keep me away from my parents and Erin, then when something goes wrong you let Father have me, who then tries  
to screw up NERV with the EVA. Then after things go haywire with the EVA you...you like what, sneak in this place and then arranged to have me kidnapped? I get that this is some sort of a secret plot, okay! But I've been through a lot in the last  
nine months and instead of being glad to see me alive you're still making me solve puzzles for you! I have you know I could freaking pound you into the ground with the EVA, man!" Patrick slammed his fist into the elevator wall with a hard thud.

Here we were trying to make our escape and the last thing I wanted was to have someone outside of the elevator hear my brother's temper tantrum. "Patrick!" I said, trying to calm him down. "He's not trying to hurt you!"

But Patrick was close to tears as he argued. For him his uncle's sudden appearance had set loose all of his own frustrations and anger about his own life and how it all had come to where we were now. "Damn you, at least tell me I've got a twin! Do you  
have any idea how lonely it was being with you in that goddamned cabin! Not being able to contact normal people! Not being able to have real friends! Having your mother go away like that..."

Uncle Victor didn't flinch with the protests but let out a long sigh. "I was afraid of this," he told Patrick. "you still always see a downside and not an upside to your life."

"So?!"

"So you're still here, and now at the right moment you're exactly where you need to be," Patrick angrily sneered at him. "And where were _you_ , then?"

"Cutting the keys that you'll need to finish this for everyone." Uncle flipped the "OFF" switch and the elevator started rising, and then began his own explanation.

"It's true," he told Patrick, "I did keep you in the dark about so much, and for that I am sorry. But if you contacted your Evangelion and what know what it really is, you probably know the real reasons why I did it this way." Patrick didn't say anything  
at first, but then replied nearly at a whsiper. "It was Mom, wasn't it?"

Uncle nodded and continued. "It was her instructions to me to arrange it to make sure we could spring you when we needed to. You needed to be an outlier, someone who was from the outside of both NERV and SEELE, and who could think on their own." Uncle  
then turned to me and asked. "Your EVA tried to contact you as well, didn't she?"

"That's what happened during that test when I blacked out, I think," I said to him, referring to the Ghost I saw in the entry plug so long ago. "Only I didn't realize it."

"Our original plan was that I'd switch the two of you," said Uncle. "I would keep Erin safe with me while Patrick took her place at NERV-2. Sir John facilitated this but unfortunately your father got wind of it just before the two of you contacted each  
other. Erin, I'm very sorry," he told me. "I didn't intend for your father to hand you over to SEELE when that happened, and that messed up much of our original plan."

"What does General Sheffield have to do with this?" I asked.

"Sir John, my friend Piotr, and others with him were part of a group that has been watching SEELE for centuries. It was they that rescued your mother and I from SEELE some years ago."

"What?" exclaimed Patrick in surprise. "You were with _SEELE_?!"

"It can be explained later," answered Uncle, "but that's how I came to be here. Now we move to the final piece in the puzzle: why you're actually here. Your friends in NERV and the Alliance are likely to try and attack this fortress sometime soon. They've  
already started moving units around and SEELE's sent a force to the GeoFront to try and destroy it and whatever Evangelion units are left."

Patrick went into a panic. "Oh, no! We have to warn them!"

Uncle Victor didn't seem particularly concerned. "NERV can take care of itself. What's more important is how you two are going to end this war," he said to the two of us. "EVA is now here, and you two are also here and free, and," he said with a slight  
smile, "in sync with each other."

"So what is it that you want us to do?" I asked.

"This elevator is going to take you to the EVA cages that are here in this fortress," Uncle instructed. "You need to take the Evangelion yourself and go to the bottom of this fortress with her. There at the very bottom you'll see a old stone temple that  
bridges a river of lava that's underneath all of this. In that temple will be your target: Chairman Kiel."

"You want us to kill the chairman using the EVA? " said Patrick with incredulity." You're a secret agent! Now that you're here, why don't you just shoot him?"

"It's not that simple. You'll find there's a lot more to the chairman than meets the eye. But," he told the twins. "I will be sure that he is there, and waiting. When the time comes, you will come for him."

"And after that?

Uncle Victor shrugged. "You're done."

The elevator took us upwards and towards the EVA cages, finally letting us out on a steel gantry that was close to both our Evangelion and the Mass Production series units. We silently ran up a flight of stairs and then into a small shack with metal walls  
that was in a darkened corner of the scaffolding. Uncle went in first, and then I followed him in. Patrick lagged behind with Kaji to talk to him about something outside.

We both sat down on the floor as my uncle pulled out a couple of metal tool boxes he had hidden away earlier. He opened one of them, revealing a small control unit.

"What's that?" I asked him.

"I've got a part of this place rigged to blow," he explained to me. "This should buy you both enough time to get the EVA going and get downstairs." As he adjusted the control device I couldn't help but look at him with a newfound affection. I had felt  
drawn to Victor when I first saw him for some unfathomable reason, but now I knew the reason and I was glad I did.

"Thank you. Again, I mean" I said, smiling at him.

Uncle shrugged, only showing a bit of emotion. "It's the least I could have done." Working quickly, he then changed the subject. "I heard you're pretty good with computers."

"I guess you can say that."

"SEELE put a software control lock on your EVA Unit's entry plug system. Do you think you can take care of that?"

"I'm sure I could. It can't be much tougher than NERV's software."

"Good girl. Once you do that the EVA's yours."

"What happens after we take care of the Chairman?" I asked, not really knowing what we should do after we finished our mission.

"Just get the hell out of here," replied Uncle.

"What about you?"

Uncle wagged a finger, admonishing me. "Don't you dare worry about me, just focus on your job. If you can't succeed in doing this nothing else will matter anyway."

"I see. No pressure then?" I joked with uncle and managed to get a small smile out of even him. He looked up at me and glanced for a long moment, then said "You really are like your mother."

"She never talked about you," I said in reply. Victor went back to fiddling with his control box, then placing it inside one of his uniform pockets. "We both had burdens to carry, and she had the worse of it by far. But we knew each other well, and that  
it would come down to this. We twins always have that way of knowing how the other one works, so much more than other siblings would."

 _Twins_ , he had said. Was Mom also a twin? I now had so many questions to ask my uncle, so many things I wanted to know about Mom and about how they were kids and how their lives were. But events were moving lighting fast, and before I got the  
chance to say anything else Patrick and Kaji the agent slipped inside of the control room.

"What the hell kept you?" growled Victor.

"Just catching up on current events," Patrick said as he sat down right next to me on the metal floor. "What happens now?"

"The two of us," Uncle motioned to Kaji and himself, "will need to take care of the security sentries around Unit 04, they usually have four guards posted at any given time. Meanwhile the twins will have to make their way to the EVA's gantry and get into  
the entry plug on their own. It's too much distance for us to climb up and then help them once the guards at the lower level are out of the way. Unfortunately there will be at least two or three techs on that side of the gantry where the plug loader  
is located."

"Is the entry plug still in the unit?" asked Patrick.

"The good news is that it's half-way, so you can just climb up and get inside. But you have to take care of the techs first." Omega then pulled out one metal box from a shelf and popped it open. From inside he pulled out a pistol and then screwed in a  
silencer, then after checking it handed it to Patrick.

"You didn't forget how to use this, did you?" asked Victor. Patrick took the gun and looked right down the sights. "Yeah, I still know how to use it."

"Keep out of sight, then one shot for each tech, in the center," instructed Uncle. "Don't double-tap. The bullets are hollow-points, they'll do the rest."

This was something I hadn't yet learned about Patrick. "You know how to shoot?" I asked him. He just shrugged at me and gave me a slight smile. "Let's just say uncle gave me a _well-rounded_ education."

"The techs may or may not be armed, but don't assume that if you don't see a gun that there isn't one they can get to." Uncle pointed a finger in the air towards Patrick. "Don't mess it up, lad. Your sister's life is on the line too here."

"Yeah, I got it."

Uncle then turned to Kaji. "We need to go now. I'll go first, you follow in another minute." As Kaji himself checked his own weapons to be sure he was prepared, Uncle Victor made his final words to us. "You'll have sixty seconds after we leave to start  
making your way. Once you take out the technicians, get them out of sight and work fast to get into the EVA."

I worried about one thing in particular about this escape plan. "Won't they notice that we're activating once we're inside?"

"I've got that worked out too. You'll know when to get started." He checked his watch. "There's no more time left. Just remember, head down the main shaft after you've got the EVA activated and don't let anything distract you. Once you're in the chambers  
you'll find the target sure enough. There's no time to give you a more detailed plan, the two of you will just have to think your way through anything else."

Patrick and I both looked at each other and nodded, we were as ready as we could ever be for something like this. "It's okay," he told his uncle. "We're good, I think."

"Then off we go," said he said to us, and started to get up off the floor. Patrick told him just as he was leaving "Thank you. I mean, I'm sorry about arguing from before."

Uncle was nonplussed and looked at him seriously "Lad, don't screw it up and you can thank me later if we're all still around." There was no goodbye from Uncle. Instead he then slipped out of the room before I could say or do anything else.

Just before following uncle out the door, agent Kaji spoke to both of us. "Once we're back in Japan I'll help sort things out with NERV for both of you. If you do encounter them for any reason before I speak to them, it's important that you don't engage  
them, but try to avoid capture."

"Okay," I said together with Patrick, speaking in complete unison. Both of us looked at each other in surprise. We were on the same wavelength now. Kaji also seemed pleased and smiled at us.

"Very good," he said, "and Patrick I will work on the issue we discussed." Issue? _What_ issue?

"Yes, thanks!" he said as he asked him one last favor, "Um, Mr. Kaji? If you see Rei and somehow I don't again please...please tell her I love her."

"Of course."

"And tell the others," Patrick said as he looked at me, "tell them I...we're so sorry about all of this."

"If you can help us deal with the chairman, I think they'll be much more forgiving. In any case, it's time to go. Ciao," he said, and then he too slipped outside and back into the dark fortress.

After the adults left there was long silence in the control room, and both Patrick and I worked up the courage to get up and get going. He looked at me and I smiled at him, glad to have him by my side. I was frightened to be sure, but also knew I wanted  
to get back into the EVA and get this over with.

"You ready?" Patrick asked me. I took my brother's hand and held it tightly.

"Yup."

We waited another minute and then both snuck outside of the little shack, crouching downwards to keep in the shadows of the gantry. Patrick had his pistol ready in his hands, and I followed closely behind.

We hid behind another big power center while Patrick carefully peeked around the corner to see if anyone was between us and the EVA. Seeing someone, he rolled away quickly and looked at flashing two fingers. I nodded, gently squeezing his arm to let him  
know I was ready for whatever came next. Patrick then closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and then rolled back around the corner and came out shooting.

I heard one "plop" and then another a few second later as Patrick moved down the scaffolding. There was a clanging sound, then some voice in the background followed by a bunch of other "plops" and another clanging sound, and then finally silence. Still  
scared but knowing I needed to do it, I leaned around the corner to take a look and saw Patrick standing over a man's body. There were two others also on the floor of the gantry, both wearing SEELE technician uniforms.

With the coast clear, I ran over to where Patrick was now standing, whispering to him to let him know I was coming so I wouldn't get shot by accident. He swiveled over in surprise and then quickly put the gun down, relieved to see me come out and towards  
him. Seeing the three dead bodies on the gantry floor I was surprised at just how well I handled it, not to mention just how skilled Patrick was at taking care of them. I had always thought that Vance was the better hunter, but perhaps not.

"Your uncle taught you how to shoot like that?"

Patrick just shrugged in response, shaken from the action but still managing to keep himself calm. "Actually, I do tactical training at NERV every week. I just never thought I'd have to do this _outside_ of the EVA." He looked around and saw the  
bodies. "We'd better cover up everything."

The two of us found black tarps and threw them over two of the bodies, then Patrick worked on trying to cover up the third body (who was enormously fat) while I looked for our plug suits. There was a storage rack close by the entry plug and on it I spotted  
two orange-and-black colored duffel bags that I quickly pulled out and lowered to the floor.

After covering up the last of the bodies, Patrick hopped over to where I was as he tried to hurry me along. "Don't bother with those," he said as he looked at the plug suit containers. "You really don't need the suits to pilot."

I tugged at my ugly and smelly prison uniform. "There's no way that I'm going to get drenched in LCL wearing this garbage." Pointing to a corner of the gantry that had a large container next to the railing, I told him "I can change over there."

Reluctantly Patrick agreed on the suits as I carefully picked out my personal one. "They made a plug suit for you?"

"They wanted to make it black," I said as I pulled my suit out of the bag while kicking his bag over to him. "But I insisted on my own colors." I batted my eyelashes at him. "Do you, um, mind turning around?"

My brother did as he was told and I scooted over to the corner with the storage and got out of view. Once hidden I practically ripped off the prison garb, sliding down my panties and then stepping into the plug suit." I could hear Patrick's voice from  
behind me.

"If we're twins then it's not like the first time I've ever seen you naked, you know?"

Was that idiot looking at me? I quickly swiveled around, just to check. Behind me was Patrick's backside. He wasn't facing me but I could see all of him sans clothing as he got into his own plugsuit. I only glanced for a second but I had to admit he looked  
pretty built for a guy his age. Nice butt, too. "Shut up!" I told him, nearly giggling. I turned back around and within a few more seconds we got our suits fully on and pressurized. I felt the plugsuit hug me snugly, fitting just the way it should  
in all the right places. "Ready?" Patrick asked.

"You can turn around now," I told him and we both did our big reveal. For a couple of seconds we stood admiring the other as we wore our plug suits. Patrick smiled at me broadly, "Looking good!"

"Yeah," I said with a sheepish grin, feeling the suit wrapped around me. For the first time in a long while I was finally feeling things were the way they needed to be. "I kind of missed it actually," I looked up again at Patrick and noticed something,  
his face seemed much more pale than before and he was clearly uncomfortable about something. I walked up to him, placing my hand against his face. "Are you okay?"

He was reluctant to answer at first. "Um, maybe I'm still a little shaken from the shootout. We should get going." Patrick then turned around and went to the entry plug, lifting open the lock lever and spinning it to get the doorway open. The entry plug  
door swung wide and I jumped inside. Patrick then set his pistol on the ground outside and then followed me in, closing the door behind us.

The entry plug presented a dilemma for the two of us: how do two pilots use just one seat? Patrick and I haggled until we worked out that because I was smaller I'd sit in front while he'd be just behind me. As the plug seat was only so big we were fairly  
cozy, being pressed against each other as we settled in.

I grabbed one of the hand actuators and flipped up the top, revealing a keypad. Then quickly I started coding in numbers while I watched the status display in front of us.

"What are you doing?" asked Patrick.

"While you and Kaji were talking your uncle told me they might have a security lock on the EVA's controls," I said. "This is a way to get around that."

"You're _hacking_ the EVA?"

I giggled just a little. "Oh, please. The term is not 'hacking', it's 'cracking' and I'm not really cracking the code but just activating our own little shield program here. " It took me a few more lines of instructions and then I had Dad's security program  
turned back on all the way. The entry plug screen displayed in large text LOCKOUT ACTIVATED SLAVE CONTROL DEFEAT. That felt rather good.

"There, that should avoid any interruptions." I then explained it further to my baffled co-pilot. "Dad put a hidden script in the EVA control OS to prevent anyone from getting access to it other than the pilot."

Patrick just shrugged. "Could have used that a few months ago. You didn't tell me you were a coder."

I gave him a half smile. If there was ever a good side to Dad it was that other special ability that I had gained from him. "I learned from the best."

We silently waited inside the entry plug for something else to happen, carefully watching the outside of the EVA through the monitor when suddenly we noticed that the lights and power went out all around the Evangelion cages. Uncle's plan was now in motion.

"That's our cue!" Said Patrick as he grabbed for the actuators at the same time I did. He shouted "Unit 04 Emergency activation protocol!" And suddenly the video display in front of us went alive with startup sequence graphics, now all moving in fast  
forward.

Below us the LCL rose up rapidly, and the two of us collectively took a deep breath then blew out all of that air before taking in the LCL. I had always hated dealing with LCL as a pilot, but now I didn't mind it quite so much. I was a part of the EVA,  
and she was a part of me again.

It only took a few more seconds for us to get Unit 04 fully activated, and just as we did so Patrick pulled down on the left actuator at the same time I pushed forward on the right one. The EVA did a clumsy twist and nearly fell out of the cage until  
I pulled things together. I guess Patrick and I weren't as nearly in sync with each other as I had thought.

"Do you even have any idea where you're going?" I asked him in an annoyed tone.

"Sure, it's down the main shaft over here, right?"

"You can't get there directly, you have to go around the cages first!"

Patrick didn't relinquish control however, and fought me by pushing when I was pulling. "Just let me pilot, okay?" He told me. "I've been doing this for the last three months and I'm pretty good by now."

"Yes, and I've spent much of that time wondering aroudn this place. I know where everything is better than you do!"

"Look, I've got a bunch of kills on the Harpies. You should at least let me take the lead."

"She was mine before she was yours," I argued. "So my sync is bound to be better than yours!"

Seeing that twin brother or no I wasn't going to just give up piloting the EVA when I knew what I was doing, Patrick's anger boiled up until he managed to get it under control. "Alright, alright! We'll do it this way: you move, I'll fight. Deal?"

That works. "Deal!" Patrick then let go of the actuator on the left and I grabbed it, pulling both towards me and moving the EVA out of the cages and in the right direction. "Hang on! We're moving out!"

I spent a minute carefully maneuvering our unit around the cages and trying to sneak towards the outside. We weren't the only EVAs moving either, as the power outage had sparked a general alert at SEELE-2 and within a few moments most of the other Mass  
Production units were also on the move. This was good for us, as we could maintain cover as we blended in with the other giants while they moved around.

There was a strong vibration that felt like an earthquake and even the red-tinted emergency lighting went out for a few seconds. "What was that?" I asked reflexively.

"Looks like the party's getting started," quipped Patrick from behind me. "I think the Alliance is bombing this place."

As the rest of the Harpies made for the exits, we stepped around the gantries and jogged over to the main shaft of SEELE-2, a gaping hole about half a kilometer wide that let down to the very bottom levels of the base. It was at the bottom of this shaft  
that we had been told earlier by Uncle Victor where the Chairman would eventually be found. Getting down would be tricky, the walls of the shaft were smooth and we'd be sliding in a nearly vertical position several thousand feet, all of the way down  
the mountain and into the volcanic furnaces below.

Just as I was about to make the plunge, Patrick put his hand on my shoulder. "Um, sister dear?"

"What?"

"On the way down, we're going to need to make a _slight_ detour."

* * *

A few minutes later we found ourselves sliding down the central shaft tunnel as I fought to break our speed while we plunged downward. On the way down Patrick had explained why he had been late to show up at the EVA cages, as Kaji had asked him if we  
wouldn't mind trying to free the captured NERV pilot Shinji Ikari on the way to meeting Chairman Keel.

I was really worried about this, as Uncle made it clear to me that we needed to find the chairman where he'd said he'd go to if the mountain was attacked. But Patrick was clearly concerned about his friend, and in a way having Shinji and Unit 01 get captured  
was sort of both our faults. So grudgingly I went along with the detour, and landed us where Kaji had instructed Patrick to look for Unit 01, over a kilometer down below the fortress's bottom level.

The last hundred feet down the main shaft was free-fall, and I quickly threw our weight forward so that Unit 04 would land softly in a rolling somersault. It didn't go that soft as we were thrown together hard against the seat as the EVA hit the ground.  
Fortunately I was still able to get us back on our feet.

Where we had ended up was not any place I had explored previously during my stay at SEELE-2. We were now standing in an underground cavern. There were a few red and green LED lights spread all around, but on the far side of the cavern was a deep red glow  
with smoke rising above it: it was the volcano underneath of the mountain. Part of the way to the cavern's edge was a giant crucifix, with an Evangelion nailed to it. There was a large Lance of Longinus plunged part of the way into the EVA's abdomen.  
The whole thing was surreally scary.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" I again asked Patrick.

"I can't just leave Shinji like this," Patrick voice came from behind me. "Besides, if there's really an attack on this place they're going to need all the help we can get. Believe me if we can get them up and running, it's going to really even the odds."

"He's _that_ good?"

"Yes. If you don't believe me just ask all the Angels that he killed."

As we moved closer to the edge of the cavern the heat from the lava flow intensified, and even in the entry plug we could feel the temperature rise sharply. Within a minute we reached EVA-01 and I hit the exterior lights on our own unit. As we looked  
at the captured Evangelion I noticed that it was covered in strange, hexagonal markings all over it's body. It wasn't moving.

"What happened to it? There's some sort of grid all over the surface."

Patrick studied the video and was at a loss for what had happened to Unit 01. "I don't know what that is! EVA can do pretty weird things sometimes."

Back to business. "Okay, we're here. What do we do now?"

"First let's get him off that cross." Patrick didn't wait for me and just grabbed the actuators himself, moving our EVA to try and start freeing up the unit by lifting up the cross first from the ground. I could see what Patrick had in mind and then quickly  
put my hands together with his, combining our mental energies to push over the massive weight of the steel crucifix. After some strenuous effort we managed to push the thing onto the cavern floor.

From there we started working on getting the EVA off the cross, working on the nails in the hands and feet first. Fortunately we still had the Progressive Knife and used that to dig out each of the nails. As we did so there was still no sign of life from  
Unit 01, nor any word from the pilot despite Patrick calling to him several times.

After the four nails the Lance of Longinus was harder to take out, as it had been plunged deep inside Unit 01's abdomen. It took us several minutes to slowly work the lance out of the wound, as we carefully tugged and tried to lift it out. It was getting  
tiring doing this, and I started to worry we'd miss our chance with the Chairman, but Patrick was dead determined to free his friend so I didn't bother protesting and just tried to help as much as I could.

The Lance came loose after several more minutes of effort, and we checked the EVA Unit for any response or sign that it was still active. It just laid there however, LCL slowly leaking out of its wounds. Patrick was about to call over to the pilot again  
when we heard loud noises to our left. Swiveling around we saw another two Evangelion units, not Mass Production types but instead one that was Red and another Blue. These were from NERV, and they were not happy to see us at all.

The red unit suddenly drew a knife as her pilot screamed over the audio channel. "Hey you asshole! Get away from him!"

Crap. "I guess this really doesn't look very good, does it?" I asked Patrick. A second later a video channel popped up on our display. It was from the red-haired Asuka Langley, pilot of Unit 02.

"You son of a bitch!" growled Asuka as she spoke to Patrick. "You fucking betrayed us!"

Patrick had known these two girls for months and did his best to try and calm things down. "Asuka, this is not what you think it is!" he tried to explain. "We just set him free, that's all."

"Bullshit! You think you can sweet talk me like you do with the First? Kensuke's DEAD because of you two!" she shouted.

A second video display then appeared. It was Rei, and for the first time I was now looking directly at the blue-haired girl I had only seen in my visions. Her face seemed emotionless as her red eyes stared directly at Patrick though the video channel.  
Despite her apparent coldness, Patrick was actually happy to see her.

"Rei!" he gleefully called out, hoping for a good response. He didn't get it.

"Forri-kun," she replied in a deadpan, monotone voice. "Surrender your unit now and we will not harm you." I looked at the video monitor and saw that Unit 07, Rei's unit, was pointing a Pallet Gun right at us at nearly point-blank range.

Patrick keyed off the audio, allowing us to talk and figure out what was next. "What do we do?" I asked him. "If we give up now we'll miss our chance."

"I know it," said Patrick. I could see the strain on his face as it pained him to work up a way to get out of this. He sighed deeply and gripped the actuators tight when he came up with something. "Erin?"

"What?"

"Can you trust me?"

Well, those were famous last words. "Oh, shit!" I said "What are you gonna do?"

"There's only one real way out of this. Whatever you do don't put up the AT Field."

"What?! Patrick!" That didn't sound good at all, but he took control over the EVA and brought up the Lance that was in our hands. He spoke to Rei, his voice almost pleading in its tone.

"Rei? Do you remember when we talked about _Romeo and Juliet_? About how stupid they were for not reading each others' minds?" Rei didn't reply back, but looked at him curiously.

"Well," Patrick said as he lifted the Lance and cocked it behind our EVA's head. "READ THIS!"

Before I could do anything Patrick screamed and thrusted the spear right towards Unit 07, the Lance just missing the EVA's head as it shot towards the back end of the underground cavern. The response from Unit 07 was quick, as three blasts hit us right  
in the chest. I could feel the burning in my heart as the pain the EVA felt relayed back to us. The force of the hit pushed us backwards and off the cliff side, and then into the cavern below.

* * *

 _Thanks for checking into another installment, one that took a bit to get going as it's been nearly two months since my last chapter update. Life for me is crazy as usual, and with visiting relatives, sick dogs, and hectic work that at least is paying well, there hasn't been a heck of a lot of time to really write._

 _If you've read_ The Awakening _already much of what's here is already known to you, but now we see it from Erin's perspective. She's realized that she's not quite so alone in the world as she had once thought and that's going to have an impact on her beyond just getting out of their mess with SEELE._

 _We're still on target to get to twenty chapters, probably by October at the rate I'm going. I've got plans on a new story beyond that that will continue Blue Rose, but where and when is still being worked on. Expect there will be another story about the same length as this one within 2018._

 _Please stay tuned and check out the Facebook page for The Blue Rose frequently, as I do try to update from my vast collection of EVA images. Thanks!_


	15. Into the Fire

Once we felt ourselves falling I ordered the EVA to grab onto anything that we could, rapidly sliding the actuators far forward. We managed to get a handful of protruded rock, but then that let loose and again I scrambled to dig the EVA's fingers into the side of the cliff to try and slow down our descent. About half-way down we got lucky and managed to slam into a protrusion of rock sticking out from the cliff. I grabbed onto it, and then both Patrick and I put our combined mental strength together as we struggled to lift ourselves on top of the rock outcropping and keep from falling further into the lava river below. As we struggled to upgright the EVA we could feel the heat from outside of the unit as alarms sounded all over the entry plug and flashed on the video display.

With every little last bit of strength I again shoved the actuators forward and then pulled back, getting Unit 04 to finally lift her way up and on top of the rock outcropping. After bobbling around a bit I found firm ground and then leaned into the rock wall. I was panting and drenched with sweat.

I was not happy with my brother. "Patrick!" I said to him in an irritated tone while still trying to catch my breath. "The next time…you pull something like that…please tell me first!"

"Sorry," he told me, also catching his breath. "It sort of came to me…all at once." It took us both a long moment to finally get settled down and once I was calmer I started checking our display to see just where we were and how the EVA was. From one of the displays I saw a massive wound in Unit 04's chest, the results of the shots from Unit 07's pallet rifle.

"How bad off are we?" Patrick asked from behind me.

"I guess the good news is that we're still alive, but your girlfriend punched three holes in us up there," I told him. "Between that and the outside heat the EVA's not in good shape at all."

"S2 will regenerate that," Patrick suggested.

"Well, right now we're in no shape for fighting." At the very least, the video display told me that EVA could still move and as Patrick said, the damage to the center of the EVA's chest was slowly starting to stabilize and heal. So that was good: we could still carry out the mission and get to the chairman. But now that we were at the bottom of the mountain, where was he? I switched the display to the visual outside the EVA and got nothing but smoke and hot plumbs of lava, but when I switched the sensors to radar I could make out something about half a mile away in the distance further down from where the lava river flowed.

Using the sensors I focused on what looked like a pattern of some sort in the distance. On top of a bridge that spanned the lava river was what looked like a stone temple. "What the hell is that?" I said aloud while I tweaked the vision controls to get a better view. What I saw past the smoke made my jaw drop.

At the end of the bridge was a set of stone obelisks about twenty or thirty feet in height, all protected by a frame of plexiglass walls framed by steel struts. Inside of the temple complex were these towers, thirteen in all, that surrounded a larger tower that rose maybe more than sixty feet. All of these things looked ancient, maybe hundreds if not thousands of years old, and were decorated with strange and bizarre carvings that included gargoyles and other beasts in twisted forms.

Patrick saw the temple as well. "Looked like the Chairman hired Satan's architect," he joked.

"That's got to be it," I replied, now knowing where we needed to go. "Where else would you go if you wanted to end the world?"

"Do you think we can get there from here?" Patrick asked me. Using the radar to judge the distance, I knew that we could but not in a single leap. The good thing about the cliffside we were against was that there were lots of jettys and outcroppings between us and the bridge, which meant that with a dozen or so carefully managed jumps this was doable. For a girl who spent her childhood dreaming about doing vaults, flying between parallel bars and flipping over balance beams now to have all of these obstacles before us, I realized that my whole life had been leading up to this moment. I couldn't fail.

"I got this," I told Patrick confidently. "Let me concentrate on piloting this stretch, okay? Help me keep an eye on things and I'll get us there in one piece.'

"Right," he replied from behind, and I felt him grab onto my waist. With my missing piece now found and right behind me, everything else was snapping into place. I focused on the screen and mentally worked out the leaps I needed to do, and then cracked my knuckles and grabbed the actuators.

"Okay. First jump to the left side," I called out. "All of those gymnastics classes are about to pay off. Ready?"

Patrick patted me on the back twice. "Ready!"

"And…GO!" I pulled back the actuators and moved the EVA forward and off the jetty. The first jump was a long one and I nearly didn't make it, having to scramble to balance ourselves once I landed and grabbing onto more rock to keep us from sliding downward.

"That was close," Patrick said.

"We're just getting started." I didn't have time to think about that prior jump as I was mentally focused on what was ahead. "Again to the left, about thirty meters and down. Ready?"

Another pat to my shoulder. "Go!"

I made the leap again, this one longer than the first jump but my landing was firm with no wobbles. "Great!" I called out to Patrick. "Let's keep this up."

It took me about another ten or so leaps to make it to where the rock wall met the bridge, and with each jump I got more and more confident that I'd reach the end in one piece. Despite her injuries Unit 04 was quick and responsive, just like the old days at NERV-2 during training.

As I jumped from ledge to ledge while making sure we didn't plunge into the smoldering river of lava below us, I asked Patrick to explain exactly what the hell he was thinking on the cliff's edge with NERV's Evangelions.

"So anyway, brother dear," I started out in a sort of playfully mocking tone, "please tell me why on Earth did you try to kill your girlfriend up there?"

"I wasn't trying to kill her," Patrick's voice again came from behind me. "I was trying to give her the Spear."

"You know you could have just handed it to her."

"I thought about that. But then Asuka would think she was in on it with us and attack her too."

I wasn't quite getting this. "So instead you threw the spear _at_ her."

"I intended to miss," he tried to explain, "but I had to make it look like I was trying to hit her."

"Congratulations, I think she was pretty convinced."

"That's why I brought up the whole Romeo and Juliet thing," he said. "Why did Romeo and Juliet die?"

I knew the story well, having read it several times. "They died of irony."

"No, seriously," said Patrick, "why did they kill themselves?"

"Well, they couldn't live without the other and were convinced that the other was dead already."

"Right, well Rei never liked that story. She thought they were stupid because they're supposedly so much in love but it turns out they're totally out of sync with each other. If they really knew each other and loved each other they'd have guessed that one or both of them would fake their deaths and figure it out. Instead they're both so broken-hearted that they go and kill themselves instead."

"Okay, so?"

"So…I brought it up so that she'll try to guess what I'm actually thinking, because what I was actually thinking was that I'm trying to make it look like I'm attacking her so that she'll shoot back instead of Asuka attacking us. That way she makes it look like we're down and we go over the cliff and out of sight, and then on our way to the Chairman."

It only took me about five seconds to give my careful opinion on this. "That is the most _stupid_ plan I have ever heard!" I told him.

"Hey, we're here," Patrick defended.

"No thanks to you!"

By now we were very close to where the stone temple or whatever it was crossed over the lava river, and I needed to get us off of the cliffside and down somewhere that the EVA would be safe at. "Got one more leap to go," I told my co-pilot.

I studied the video display to search for a landing place, then Patrick pointed out a smooth patch of rock that looked like it was about a hundred yards from the temple itself, on the shore of the lava river and surrounded by boulders. "There," he said. "About sixty meters down."

Sixty meters was the longest of any of my leaps, and one bobble or mishap would toss us into the lava river. Worse, with the small rock ledge we were on right now there was not space to run, and little else I could do to pick up speed and get us there on a big jump. I closed my eyes and envisioned the last leap, imaging it as a flying dismount off the balance beam. It was going to be close.

"Alright, one more time. Ready?"

"Ready!"

"Go," I shouted and went for it, launching the EVA into the air and flipping it before coming down. I got feet on the flat rock but we came in too fast and I found myself sliding off and then plunging down the cliffiside until I found another spot and dove for it. We tumbled forward and finally ended up on two feet. Another few yards and we would have ended up in the lava. That was close!

"Dismount! Finally made it!" I wiped my forehead, which was now layered with a coat of sweat.

"Good job!" praised Patrick. Letting myself have a little smile, I replied back to him "Not exactly gold medal material but it'll do."

Both of us got back to the job at hand, searching through the video display to see if anyone was inside the stone devil temple that was in front of us. "Can you see inside of there?" Patrick asked. I adjusted the video magnification and sensors to get a better look and did in fact see two people: one man pushing a wheelchair with someone else inside.

"That's the chairman! He's here!"

"Do you see Uncle?" asked Patrick.

I took a more careful look and saw that it was Piotr, the Chariman's old manservant and the one who had slipped me the note saying "RUN AWAY" who was pushing Kiel through the temple. "No," I told Patrick behind me. "There's just that guy who pushes the Chairman around. Should we go ahead?"

"No," decided Patrick, "we wait for uncle to show up first. I'm pretty sure that's going to be necessary for what he had in mind. Can you hide us?"

I could and maneuvered the EVA to hide behind the waves of smoke clouds that came from the lava river, turning down all of our running lights in the process. Within a few seconds we were silent and motionless as we hid behind thick smoke and we waited.

For the next couple of minutes we watched as a drama unfolded inside of the temple. Old Piotr wheeled Chairman Kiel to the middle of the temple, where the largest obelisk was standing. Piotr then left him there and as the chairman's back was turned to him he pulled out a pistol from a pocket at held it at the Chairman's head.

Convenient, I thought. Maybe someone will take care of this problem for us.

Piotr didn't fire at first, and the Chairman struggled to get up out of the wheelchair and face him. While we couldn't hear what they were saying, it was pretty clear that Piotr intended to kill Kiel. Suddenly there was a flash from the pistol, but just as quickly there was a energy field that came from Kiel himself, a field that glowed in hexagonal patterns. Piotr's first and then second shot ricochet off the energy field. Before Piotr could get another shot off a steel pike shot out from the Chairman's wheel chair and plunged right into Piotr's chest. I gasped with shock as the old man collapsed onto the ground, the pistol still in his hand.

"That field around him..." Patrick said from behind me.

"It's an AT Field!" I recognized it almost immediately, and now the reason why we needed to be here became clear: Chairman Kiel wasn't quite human at all. "That explains why uncle said we would need the EVA to kill the Chairman!"

"Look, someone's coming," Patrick pointed out, and we then saw another man walk into the temple from the shadows.

My uncle stopped to see Piotr's body, bending over to do something but we couldn't tell what. Piotr was dead, that much we knew, and I could only guess from the way Uncle carefully dwelt over his body that he also knew him well.

Uncle then slowly approached Kiel, speaking with him as he did so. The Chairman turned to see who came, holding some sort of object in his hands. While he couldn't walk much, Kiel had enough strength to remain standing as Uncle continued moving closer to him. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon.

"Erin?" my brother asked me.

"Yeah?"

"Are you ready?"

I admit I was still scared out of my mind. At the same time I knew everything had been leading up to this. Everything with EVA, with Mom and Dad, with Vance, and everyone at NERV-2, and now with Patrick. Everything in my whole life from gymnastics to computers and finally to Evangelion was intertwined with what I was now doing. The old man in front of me had once made my life as miserable as it could be, he had lied and he had done horrible things to the people I loved. And he had also done horrible things to billions of other people too. So was I ready to do something about it?

Yeah, I was ready.

Uncle stopped just a few feet away, forcing Kiel to pivot towards him and face the outside of the temple. As they did so I slowly moved our EVA out from the smokescreen, carefully maneuvering closer to the rocky shore of the lava river. They were almost within our reach now.

The last thing I saw was uncle turning his head and looking directly at us: he knew we were there. It was time.

 _Oh, no_ , I thought. _Kiel's wheelchair has that spike weapon. If uncle gets too close…._

I thought to move forward but before I could react Kiel activated the chair and again the spear shot out, plunging right into Uncle Victor's chest.

"Uncle!" I screamed, and Patrick screamed right along with me.

"Oh, no!" I cried. We were too late to save him. But we were right on time to avenge him.

Patrick grabbed the actuators, and I put my hands right on top of his. In unison we both shouted "LET'S FINISH THIS!" and then we moved forward with everything we had.

We jumped the EVA into the lava river. It was shallow, and allowed us to run towards the edge of the temple. The temperature display rose up dramatically but I ignored it, instead pushing the EVA towards the temple itself.

I could see a thick plexiglass wall covering the temple, put up to protect it against the pillars of fire coming from the lava river. Right in front of me was the Chairman, looking out towards us as we approached. With one effort I commanded the EVA to make a fist and we punched the plexiglass wall, shattering it. My fist kept moving and took out a few of the giant stone pillars until it was stopped.

On the video display I saw Chairman Kiel close up. His vision enhancer was now off, and I could see his eyes. They were bright red, just like Kaworu or like Rei. I knew his secret now, and I knew how to defeat him.

Our EVA's fist had been stopped by the AT-Field that the Chairman had generated, and I could see a wall of glowing hexagons floating in mid-air. "AT-Field!" I shouted to Patrick.

"We got one of them too," he shouted from behind me. "Punch through!"

I concentrated on our EVA's AT Field and for a few seconds I could feel the friction from the contact with the Chairman's field. There were sparks and colored bolts flying in all directions as we made contact, but I kept up the effort. I could feel myself straining to move forward, like pressing against an invisible wall in front of me. Behind me I heard Patrick's laboring breath and I knew that he too was giving it every ounce of effort he could.

Finally I felt a breakthrough and the EVA's fist moved forward. The Chairman's AT-Field had been penetrated. Quickly I grabbed him with both hands.

"I've got him!" I shouted to Patrick behind me.

"Then do it! DO IT NOW!"

Because we were standing in the lava river the surface temperature of the EVA continued to rise, and I could feel the LCL we were in nearly boiling from the heat. The video display flashed DANGER EXTREME EXTERIOR SURFACE TEMPERATURE and I wanted to just jump out of the lava river now but I couldn't. Not until I had taken care of the Chairman himself.

My fear came to a boil but we had to do this. I gulped down every emotion that I felt and then plunged both of our EVA's hands right into the lava river. I could feel something like explosions buffeting the EVA's hands and then the pain transmitting from the burning of the EVA's skin from the hot lava got to me. Still I felt something moving in my grasp, Kiel or whatever he was struggled to live and escape. I closed my eyes and screamed and then plunged the EVA's hands further into the lava river.

I held him down underneath the lava river for as long as I could. At one point the pain in my hands got unbearable, even though it wasn't actually my hands burning I could feel the feedback from the EVA's hands through our sync and I knew the pain she felt as flesh burned off her hands. Finally the pain became too intense and even though I wasn't sure if I had finally done it but unable to take any more, I let go and jumped the EVA out of the lava river and back onto the rocky shoreline.

The EVA landed on her back and the warning klaxons were still going off inside our entry plug, but we were out of the lava. I looked at the video monitor to see if there was any sign of Kiel.

For just a few seconds I could see something metal floating on the surface. Was that him? Or maybe what was left of him. But then the steel parts sank into the lava river, diving as a plumb of steam jetted out in their place. I kept searching for anything left over, breathing hard as I tried to recover from what had just happened. It took a few more moments but I saw nothing come back up from the lava river itself. Kiel was dead.

With the video I searched through the temple trying to find out what happened to Uncle, but I couldn't see him there at all. The only body was that of Piotr. Was Uncle still alive? I couldn't tell.

"No sign of anyone," I told Patrick behind me. "I don't see Uncle anywhere around here. Do you see him?" But Patrick didn't say anything.

"Patrick?" I asked but there was still no reply. Then he leaned forward and slumped against my right shoulder.

Instinctively I turned around and as I did so he fell back against the back seat of the throne. His face was gone, literally gone. The pale skin that was once his face was now replaced with a red, gooey substance. I gasped and then screamed "PATRICK!" What had happened to him?

During the entire time from when we fell off the cliff above after being shot by Rei's EVA until now I had not actually seen Patrick. I had only heard his voice from behind me, and while he seemed stressed it didn't really seem cause for alarm, considering what else we were doing. Despite his face being a horrible red mask, he was still breathing and alive if just barely.

"Oh my God! What happened to you?"

Patrick's voice came out weakly. "Need…medicine…"

"Okay, the plug's got a med-kit! We'll use that!"

"Not…there," he said in a graveley voice. "LCL…Stabilizer. Die…without it."

"Where is it then?"

"Kaji…looking for it. Rei…I need Rei!"

"Didn't she just shoot you a little while ago?" I asked. Patrick gurgled and tried to get the words out. "Rei…stabilizer."

"Will she have it?"

"Maybe…gotta get back…to her…"

I pivoted to the display and looked back towards the pathway we had come. To get back to where the NERV EVAs were we'd have to make all of the same jumps I did before, only now our EVA was heavily damaged. Her hands and feet were scarred and burned from the lava and while I knew the S2 engine was regenerating them it wasn't nearly as fast as it needed to be. But I didn't' have a choice. Fortunately I knew the way back.

"It's a tough climb back, the EVA's really in bad shape right now, " I said to Patrick as I grabbed the actuators and started to move us off the shoreline. "But I'll get you there!"

The EVA stood up, bobbling a bit from the lack of balance but I immediately put her into a run and started the jumps. I took another look at Patrick and I knew I didn't have much time at all. Most of all I was scared of what was actually happening to Patrick, as he didn't mention anything about needing medication before. He did say earlier that NERV had "saved his face" but I had no idea it was like this.

"When did this happen to you?" I asked him as I jumped the EVA back the way we came. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Target…important," he gurgled. "Nothing else matters…"

"Well you matter, dammit!" I replied back, wiping the tears from my eyes. "I just found you, I'm not going to lose you now!"

Truthfully everything I did to get us back to the others was a blur, I still don't remember how I did it all. At the end of the jumps I climbed the cliffside we had fallen off earlier, only now it was horribly painful as the EVA's hands were still not recovered from the burns. Knowing I couldn't fail, I just gritted and bore the pain and lifted us back and over the top. In my mind I prayed, I thought "Oh God I'll never do another bad thing ever again but just please save my brother," and I kept repeating that as I jumped. Things had gotten together for me now only to fall apart again. But I had to make sure Patrick lived, no matter what was in my way.

By the time we got to the top of the cliff the strain of everything we had endured finally got to the EVA herself and I felt her gave way. I tried to walk her forward but her knees buckled and we went tumbling face first into the ground. I held on tight as we violently crashed while Patrick, barely conscious, shoved up against me.

The entry plug lights went dark and the main video display died, followed by the sudden illumination of red emergency lighting. EVA was on minimal power, and I couldn't get her to get up again despite sliding the actuators a few times and trying to coax her. I turned back to Patrick and he looked worse. Where the others here? Would they attack us now that we showed up again? I had to take a chance and popped open the control panel on my left actuator, and then activated the emergency audio.

"Somebody help us!" I shouted into the audio feed. "Patrick…he's dying!" There was silence for a moment, but then a voice came back.

"What's happening?" The voice was faint, and was that of a boy speaking in accented English. EVA was still able to pick up audio outside and broadcast it over the entry plug speakers.

"He needs medicine!" I shouted back. "Um, something with LCL!"

A few seconds later came another reply. "She's coming! Can you open your entry plug door?"

Leaving Patrick on the throne I jumped out of the seat and ran back to behind the throne itself. There was a latch there, labeled EMERGENCY PLUG RELEASE colored in black and yellow tape. I lifted up the latch and held on with both hands, pulling towards me. Suddenly the entry plug shifted as compressed air shot us partly out of the EVA's back. The jolt of movement nearly took me off my feet, but as soon as we stopped I rushed back and went to the hatch door. I struggled to spin the lock wheel and after some strain and effort I was able to loosen it, and push it forward. LCL came streaming out of the entry plug as the door opened, and as I popped my head outside I saw a lone figure on the ground running towards the EVA.

There was an emergency rope ladder packed into a side panel next to the door, and I opened it and tossed it outwards and down. Within a few seconds I could see someone grab onto the ladder and start upwards.

I looked towards the entry plug and didn't see Patrick moving at all, and I feared for the worst. I bolted back, wading through the remaining LCL in the plug to reach him. His eyeslids were shut, and I couldn't tell if he was even breathing.

Someone entered through the open door and I looked towards them. It was Rei herself. Strangely she was completely naked.

"She's here," I told Patrick, hopeful that the arrival of Rei could give him enough hope to hang on.

Rei bounded over to the throne and where we were. Patrick moved just a nudge, groaning. "Rei," he said, barely able to make the words out. "Is that you?"

"I'm here," she said in a whisper-like voice. In her hands was a syringe.

"I can't see you," said Patrick.

Rei gently held his head in her hand, while taking off the syringe cover with the other. "Darling, I'm right in front of you." Apparently all sins were forgiven between both of them.

She got on top of Patrick and then pushed the needle of the syringe right into his neck vein, pushing in all of a glowing orange medicine into his body. After injecting him she tossed the empty syringe and then held his head with both of her hands, looking desperately for any sign that the medicine was working.

"Will he be okay?" I asked her in desperation. She didn't say anything but kept looking at him, watching for anything.

Patrick moved his head slightly, and tried to take deeper breaths but had trouble getting his voice out. He struggled to speak, saying "Finally…finally got the two of you together…"

Oh God, Patrick, no not like this…

"Last…piece in place…" Patrick gasped out, "just way…to finish."

"Patrick, please don't say that!" I cried as I held his hand. I looked over to Rei, desperate for anything. "Is there anything else you can do for him?"

At first it looked like she didn't show any response, her face frozen in a stoic glance. But then I could see her eyes quiver, and her small mouth start to tremble. She was just as afraid as I was that we'd lose him. She looked at Patrick, caressing his bloody head with both of her hands and told him "Forri…I…" she struggled to get the words out. "I…love…" Rei's eyes were streaming tears, just like mine were.

Patrick's head leaned back against the throne, and Rei immediately embraced him. I jumped up and did the same, holding onto my brother as tightly as I could, not knowing if it would help but wanting to do whatever else I could, to at least let him know I loved him even in his final moments.

There was a long pause as both and Rei and I squeezed Patrick, finally interrupted when we heard a voice over the audio speakers. "Rei? Rei?"

Rei perked her head up, knowing the voice. "Misato-san."

The voice on the speakers belonged to Colonel Katsuragi, the woman who had tried to recruit me for NERV while I was at Tokyo-3. She was here also, and she was bringing help. Her and Rei conversed in Japanese on the speakers while I still held onto Patrick's hand. He was still hanging in there, breathing with difficulty but still going.

Their conversation ended and I asked Rei what was going on. Rei replied to me 'Misato-san is coming with a medical team. They will take Forri-kun back to Japan."

I didn't quite know what to do except stay there with Patrick, and we both waited for the help to arrive. Neither one of us spoke to the other, as I wasn't sure what to even say to Rei and I'm sure she was just as stuck. I did think of one thing, and I quickly bounded to where the EVA entry plug medical kit was. Pulling it out, I found and unfurled the silver foil emergency blanket. Considering that Rei was just standing there completely naked, it was the least I could do for her.

I gave her the blanket. "Um, here you go!" I said, offering it to her. She didn't say anything in return, but took it and wrapped it around herself, and then both of us got back to waiting with Patrick between us and hoping that time hadn't run out.

Misato must have been close by because within another minute she dropped into the entry plug from outside. "Rei!" she said, quite glad to see her. "Are you alright?" she spoke in accented English.

"It's Forri-kun," Rei told her, and Misato went straight to the throne, not even seeming to notice me standing there besides Patrick.

"Oh, my God," said Misato, who then looked back to Rei. "Did you give him the stabilizer?"

"I just did. 30ccs."

"Let's hope it works. I've got a Thunderchief waiting downstairs for him and the others." Misato called over to the hatch and then two other men in camouflage uniforms dropped down, carrying a stretcher between then. Only after they started to carefully take Patrick off the control throne did Misato finally turn to me.

"Hello, Erin," she said. I didn't quite know what to say in return, I felt not only embarrassed but shamed by what happened back in Tokyo-3. If Misato wanted to just blow me away right now she'd be entitled to.

"Um, hi," I answered with a horribly sheepish grin.

"She brought him back to us," Rei said to Misato. The colonel herself took a deep breath and gave the situation a moment of thought.

"I got a lot going on right now, and we need to deal with what happened but not just yet," she told me. "For now we need to get you out of here, so do you mind coming with us?"

"Of course," I said. Misato nodded and then motioned to the empty hatch of the entry plug. I followed the men who lowered Patrick down to the ground.

When I had rushed back up the cliff in order to get help I didn't really notice what had happened after we had left. Now as I stepped away from my EVA I could see more clearly and it was a horrible mess, the result of a battle that had been fought here. Body parts from at least two different Evangelions were strewn all around the cave floor, and much of the ground was covered in a thick, oozy and horrible smelling coat of LCL. A third EVA, the purple-colored Unit 01, was sitting with her back to the cavern wall, seemingly sleeping. Parked on the ground just under the tunnel opening was an Alliance aircraft with medical markings, and I could see one of the NERV pilots, Shinji Ikari, standing close to another stretcher as it was being loaded into the aircraft. He was dressed in a blue and white plug suit. I realized that it must have been him that I had spoken to after my cry for help.

The crew hurried Patrick into the aircraft, and I saw a third medical stretcher also already inside. Misato motioned to Rei to get on board and I also started to follow but then Misato held me back with her hand on my arm.

"Sorry," she told me. "You can't go on that one."

"But Patrick," I protested.

"He'll be alright," she told me. "But we need to talk to you about what happened, and hopefully you can give us some answers to a lot of questions we have about what you've seen."

"Sure," I said to her, "Anything you need." As I spoke to Misato two other soldiers approached, walking from another Thunderbird aircraft that had just landed nearby. She nodded at the two men and then spoke to me again. "Please go with these two gentlemen. Boys," she spoke to the two soldiers, "Be gentle with this one. She's important."

"Yes, colonel," replied one of them. With that Misato didn't say goodbye but just smiled faintly at me and then turned to go towards the medical evacuation aircraft. One of the men gently nudged me on the arm and I started to follow them, not having much choice to do anything else. But just before we got going Rei came up to me. Still wrapped in nothing but the emergency blanket I had given her earlier, she looked at me for a moment silently. I wanted to say something but couldn't think of what it would be, until she finally spoke out.

"Thank you," she said in a soft voice. I could see just a hint of emotion in her eyes.

"I hope he's gonna be okay," I said to her as I looked to the other aircraft, the one that Patrick was now on. Rei didn't reply, but just nodded her head.

"Rei!" Misato's voice called out to her from the aircraft. "Hurry! We've got to go now!"

" _Sayonara_ ," was the last thing she said to me as she turned to go, and then she hurried through the open hatch door of the aircraft. I watched as the aircraft lifted off the ground and then hovered towards the deep shaft with its vertical jets, only interrupted when one of the men guarding me said "Miss, let's get going." I trundled along with them to our own waiting aircraft, readying to take me to God knows where. I was finally free of SEELE but still a prisoner, and by now I was resigned to my own fate.

 _Finally got this done and posted, and it feels good. You'd think it would be easy writing chapters of material that you've already written elsewhere, but strangely this has been the most difficult part of doing this book as you have to re-trace everything completely and then work it in without deviating too much._

 _Fortunately now we can veer off into completely new material, and will push onto the next few chapters. We're now about 75% done with the story, and I'll do my level best to complete this as soon as I can._


	16. Catch and Release

Despite my concerns for Patrick's life I was so exhausted from everything that had taken place in the mountain that I fell asleep onboard the Alliance aircraft for nearly the entire length of the journey. I remembered nothing about how or where we landed  
/but when I finally did wake up I was inside of another bedroom. I was no longer wearing my plug suit but instead I was dressed in a green t-shirt and blue shorts, and I was lying face up on a normal bed.

Groggily I shook my head and woke myself up completely. I didn't remember changing clothes and wondered if someone else did that for me, which didn't make me feel great about this place initially. Looking around, the room I was in resembled another hotel  
/room, with a bed, a chair, and an attached closet and bathroom. All of it was very clean, but no windows. Of course, I was still a prisoner.

Prisoner or no I needed to get clean and as I got out of bed and poked in the closet I saw fresh clothes, including a few more t-shirts, some black leggings and a few pairs of shorts, plus a pair of runners and another pair of slippers. There was fresh  
/underwear too, all still wrapped in the package. I got out a set of clothes to wear and then found the bathroom.

I took a lengthy shower and tried telling myself not to worry about either Patrick or myself. I was "important" according to Colonel Katsuragi, and hopefully that meant whoever these people were would be taking better care of me than SEELE did. I couldn't  
/help but keep thinking about Patrick however, and about how his whole face had melted away. It was a horrifying image, and I just prayed as I showered that he would somehow be okay.

From the closet I had picked out a yellow t-shirt and black leggings, and then tied on my runners. There was no phone, television, or computer in my room, so no way to contact anyone outside about where I was. Out of curiosity I tried the bedroom door  
/handle and found that it in fact was not unlocked, so I stepped outside.

There was a hallway that had unmarked doors to the left and right of me, but there was no one present that I could see. I looked towards both ends to check again and then decided a little exploring might be in order, so I turned right and started walking  
/downward. Just as I reached the end of the hallway I heard footsteps and suddenly someone turned the corner.

"Ah, you're up and about!" I was greeted by a cheerful voice from a young woman. She was short, not much taller than myself, and slender with large brown eyes framed with circle-rim glasses and long auburn hair tied in a ponytail. She wore a suit jacket  
/with matching grey flannel slacks, and a white dress shirt. The woman flashed a broad smile and offered me her hand. "Sorry we didn't get properly introduced earlier. My name is Olivia Perry."

I took her hand, if a bit reluctantly. "Um, hi."

"I see you found your room was in order?"

"Yeah. Did someone take off my plug suit?"

"One of the nurses did," Olivia cheerfully responded. "We've got it safe, don't worry. Are the new clothes okay?"

"They're just fine," I replied, wondering how they got my size. "Where are we, anyway?"

"Welcome back to the USA, Miss Forrestal," said Olivia. "If you'd like please join me for breakfast and I'll be happy to explain everything."

Olivia led me around the corner and into an elevator car, and then we went up two flights to another floor. There I saw another row of unmarked doorways and I wondered just what kind of place I was in. The woman opened up one room where I saw a simple  
/table and two chairs, and then she asked me to sit down.

Nearly as soon as I sat in the chair another person, a man in a white uniform, came into the room with a pushcart and promptly started laying out steel containers on the table. He had several of these placed on the table between Olivia and myself and  
/then after all were presented he promptly lifted up the steel covers, revealing a giant American style breakfast with eggs, bacon, pancakes, toast, and everything else that I could imagine. The smell was aromatic and hypnotizing, as I had not had  
/a decent meal like this in a very long time.

"Thank you," Olivia said to the man and he promptly wheeled out his cart and left the room, closing it from behind him. From one container Olivia poured juice into a glass and offered it to me. "OJ?"

"Oh, please!" I told her. I suspected this whole massive breakfast thing was just something to butter me up, and it was working.

"Do you drink coffee?" asked Olivia.

"No, I don't. Milk is okay, though."

Olivia smirked to herself. "Still a kid, huh?" I didn't reply but immediately dug into breakfast and for the next few wonderful moments nearly forgot about all of the horrible things that had transpired before coming here.

After gorging myself I leaned back on the chair and burped. Olivia, who had joined me in eating, didn't say much at first but waited for me to finish off everything and only once we both had empty plates in front of us did she start conversing with me  
/again.

"I heard you were out of it for quite a while," started Olivia. "I thought this might get you back to something like normal."

"It was good," I admitted to her. "I hadn't had real American food in…" I thought about how long it was out of it since the time I boarded my EVA back in NERV-2. I had been almost a year since then. "…forever."

"Well," Olivia smiled, "We will try to make sure everything else here is just as pleasant."

"Where am I, exactly?"

"Massachusetts," said Olivia. "This is Alliance Base North. Not long ago this used to be called NERV First Branch."

"Are you with the Alliance?" I asked her.

"Yes, although I'm not military. I'm sort of a contractor."

"Oh," I said, and then more important things came to my mind. "How about my brother?"

"Patrick is back in Tokyo-3, at the NERV GeoFront," she told me. "He's receiving medical care right now."

"Will he be okay?"

"As I'm informed he's alive but it's too early to tell how much better he'll get." She gave me a faint smile. "I know that's not a great answer."

"At least he's alive," I told her. "I was so worried."

"Of course you would be."

Olivia seemed nice enough, but I decided that to be direct was my best course at this point if I wanted real answers. "Am I a prisoner?"

The woman frowned slightly. "Not quite the word I'd use," said Olivia. "More like a very valuable 'subject'. You were in the front row for a lot of things that both NERV and the Alliance would like to know about."

"Like what?"

"Well, your father kept a lot of things hidden for that secret project of his, and apart from a couple of other people you're the only survivor of NERV-2. Maybe you could tell us about what he was doing."

"Okay."

"Also, you were at SEELE fortress in Norway for something like three months, and you had contact with Chairman Kiel there."

And I killed him too. "Yeah, I did."

"We'd like to know about anything he told you, or anything you saw there. Do you think you could help us?"

Did I have any choice? I needed to find out what the incentive was here and just who I was dealing with. I had trusted the wrong people before, with dire consequences. "What happens to me after all of this?"

"It's not entirely up to me to decide that," Olivia answered, "NERV and the Alliance still need to figure out what they're going to do with you. What I can tell you however," she continued, "is that if you can tell us as much as you know, no matter how  
/small you might think it is, that it will go a long, long way into making sure everything comes out okay."

"Will I be able to see Patrick again?" I asked her. At this point it was all I wanted.

"Yes," she said, seemingly firm in her answer. "Please help me out, and I'll personally see to that."

"Then where do we start?"

* * *

For the next few days I spent hour after hour answering questions from Olivia about pretty much my whole life from the time my mother went away to the events in SEELE's fortress. The experience was exhausting, as not only did she ask a lot of questions  
/but also wanted to know as much detail as I could provide her. Often she repeated questions, just to be sure my answers were consistent, and sometimes she'd make me go back in time to go over something again. Olivia was very methodical and very polite,  
/never making threats and never raising her voice, and I found it easy to cooperate with her.

The whole experience of recalling one more time everything that had happened to be wasn't particularly pleasant. This wasn't like when Patrick and I were trying to get to know each other and fill in the gaps of our lost time. As part of my interrogation  
/Olivia had many questions about Dad and what was going on at NERV-2, and I got the impression from the sorts of questions that she was asking that Dad was doing all manner of bad things. Stealing secrets, hacking government computers, claiming research  
/as his own, bribing or blackmailing politicians, Dad was involved with some pretty dark forces and Olivia all but implied that his Nobel prizes were based on stolen research.

Perhaps fortunately for me I was in the dark just as much as everyone else was, although it took several rounds of pointed questions and my inability to answer them to finally convince Olivia of that. Dad was certainly good at keeping secrets, and the  
/biggest secret of all was keeping the truth about Patrick away from me.

One night after dinner Olivia returned me to my room, and then I just got stripped down and took a hot bath, something I hadn't done in months. I just lay there in the tub as the water slowly cooled and wondered about everything, about me and Dad and  
/Patrick and about how messed up I felt.

I mean, I loved my Dad. I really did. But it was harder now, knowing the truth about him. Did he still do good things to me despite all of what he was involved in? Yes, but also no. Handing me over to SEELE after my accident in the EVA all but ruined  
/my life. I really wish he hadn't kept Patrick a secret from me, I can remember so many times back in NERV-2 when I just wanted someone, anyone to play and talk with. That someone was out there, three hundred miles away and wishing for the same thing  
/I was. And Dad knew it and still kept us apart. I could understand why Patrick was so angry at him.

I took a deep breath and covered my face. I wanted to hate him, I did, but I couldn't. I knew him too well, having spent my whole childhood with him. What happened to Mom broke him apart, something unexpected, something that even with his smarts and his  
/will and his charm he couldn't overcome. So like it seemed so many others Dad was lost to the Evangelion.

Where was he now? Was he really alive still but somewhere else in space and time like Patrick told me? I just had to hope that he was, and that maybe, one day, I'd get a chance to tell him how I really felt.

* * *

I spent a few more days in a repeated pattern of interrogations followed by meals and more interrogation then meals, shower or bath, and sleep. Apart from the staff where I was I didn't see any other "subjects" and wondered if I was the only captive in  
/this place. Every day that went by I asked Olivia the same question: how was Patrick? The answer was always the same: he's being treated and well cared for, but nothing definite. At least he was still alive.

Perhaps we got to a breaking point when Olivia finally asked me to talk about myself. No secrets here, just who Erin Forrestal was and what she was about. But I found that I was suddenly at a loss and couldn't really get anything out. Perhaps I had done  
/so much talking in the last week or more that my little brain had finally short-circuited. Ask me about NERV-2 or SEELE or Evangelion and I could go on and on about what I knew, but ask me about myself and I couldn't say anything. I felt unnerved.

Olivia sensed that I was tired with all of the endless questions and just smiled at me. "Alright, I think you've had enough."

"So, no more questions then?" I asked. My interrogator agreed. "Let's take a break, shall we?"

I jumped at the chance. "Any way we can go outside?" I hadn't really been exposed to prolonged sunlight since I had been taken from Nevada.

Olivia winked at me. "I think we can take a chance. Come on!"

I exited the building along with Olivia and a couple of large men dressed in business suits who I assumed were security guards. From the outside the building looked like just any regular office structure with tinted black glass panels. There was nothing  
/to identify where we were other than a building number. Looking around it appeared that we were in the middle of an office complex, but there were very few people outside besides ourselves.

Finally free to feel the sun on my skin I stretched my arms above my head and cracked all of my joints. Olivia walked beside me and grinned as she saw me take in the sunlight. She still wore a business suit with slacks while I had on another plain red-colored  
/t-shirt and black leggings. For the first time in quite a while I felt comfortable.

"Feels good to be out, doesn't it?" Olivia asked.

"Sure does," I told her with a slight smile. "I really missed the outdoors after being inside of mountains and fortresses and prison cells and all of that."

"You're quite something, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"I think if most other kids had gone through what you did they'd be a dribbling mess."

I shrugged at that. "I'm still a mess."

"Hey, rest easy," she reassured me. "I think the worst is over for you at this stage."

"Any word on my brother?"

"I do have some new information in fact. According to our other branch Patrick's condition has been upgraded from 'guarded' to 'serious,' so I would say that's an improvement."

I was elated at even that little bit of news. "Did they manage to save his face?"

"That I don't know. Theydo some pretty wickedly cool science out there at NERV so hopefully he'll be okay."

We kept walking down the street where our building was under the watchful eye of the two guards, talking as we went. Finally I felt I could let my guard down a little more with Olivia, though I still didn't know much about her.

"What's going to happen to me?" I asked her.

"I think that's still being decided," Olivia replied. "You're an Evangelion pilot, and that makes you valuable. I understand Admiral Vinson has been involved with the matter and I'm sure he'll see to it you're well taken care of."

"Oh, no," I said aloud. The Admiral was the commander of the NERV forces that my then-collaborator Kaworu had slaughtered while I stood by. It was Admiral Vinson that I had gone to such lengths to fool in order to gain entry into NERV. If he was deciding  
/things, and if it was really true as Patrick had told me that my dad had provided medication to Vance that he knew would eventually kill him, I didn't think the Admiral would be too easy on me at all.

"I wouldn't worry too much, Erin," Olivia tried to reassure me. "The war's over now, at least it looks that way. Everyone's gonna start picking up the pieces and try to get back to something like normal."

"I don't even know what normal is anymore."

"Normal is not having to worry about if you're going to die tomorrow, and instead worry about what most girls your age should be worrying about: growing up, school, clothes, and boys!"

I laughed a little at that comment, as few of those were things I had even thought about for months. I guess Olivia was right, and maybe it was time to rest easier.

Before I could reply to her I heard the noise of a helicopter in the distance, a noise that became steadily more loud. Turning to Olivia, I could see alarm on her face. She was clearly worried about something. She turned to the two security guards and  
/motioned to them to start heading back to our building. "Get her inside, now!" Olivia ordered and one of the large men took my arm to hurry me back. But then there came several black SUVs down both sides of the road we were walking on. Olivia pulled  
/out a radio from her jacket pocket and both of our guards drew their pistols that were hidden in their coats, but from the black vehicles streamed out a dozen or more of black-clad heavily armed men. Most of them had the white letters 'FBI" emblazoned  
/on their combat vests.

Olivia rushed over to where I stood and tried to hurry me further down the street but we were cut off by the armed men. Out of another SUV came another three persons, two men and a woman, who were wearing dark suits with sunglasses. All three had their  
/guns drawn. Surrounded and outnumbered, Olivia sighed out in deep frustration, as both of our guards put their hands in the air. She found the leader of the group and immediately launched a verbal assault, which was all that she could do considering  
/the circumstances.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she shouted at the leader, a tall Caucasian man with silver-grey hair. "This is our subject!"

"The Alliance doesn't have jurisdiction over this," he promptly answered. "Stand down if you don't want to get carried away as well." Olivia tried to reach out to me but was pushed back by some of the armed me, while the tall leader came up to me.

"Erin Forrestal?"

Confused and now a bit scared, I just answered him. "Yes?"

"FBI. We have a warrant for your arrest?"

Arrest? You mean I wasn't a prisoner before this? I didn't know what to say.

"On what fucking charges?" Olivia protested.

"Terrorism."

"Oh, Bullshit! She's a POW, not a criminal case!"

"The Federal DA has already given your supervisors notice of this, go see them if you have any issues." With that the other man and woman in suits took me and promptly put me against one of the SUV, firmly holding my hands behind my back and slipping  
/on handcuffs. The second man read me my rights while the female agent led me to the back of one of the SUVs, opening the rear passenger door and pushing my head downward as she nudged me inside.

I looked for Olivia, not knowing what just happened. On her face I saw anger and frustration. "Erin! Just hang on, we'll get you out of this!" I didn't hear anything further as the female agent got inside the SUV and sat next to me and closed the door.  
/Seconds later we sped off, again to God knows where.

* * *

I guess with my arrest that the other shoe dropped. Olivia had called me a "subject" but I suppose that was a nice way of saying "Prisoner of War." Still, the Alliance had been a lot nicer than my new custodians.

The SUV took me on a short trip to the local office of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. Once there I was processed like any other criminal: photographed, fingerprinted, and interviewed. I was again given a quick, very businesslike brief by one  
/of the agents of what my rights were. Then I was presented with a prisoner's uniform of light blue blouse and pants that were way too large for me, and had to give up the clothes I had after being allowed to change in a bathroom.

My mind went numb, and strangely I was getting a bit used to all of this handling. As bad as this was at least it wasn't SEELE, eh? I also knew that I needed not to completely roll over for my new captors.

"Excuse me," I asked the agent that was booking me. "Don't I get a phone call?"

"Yes, miss," he said in a very polite but firm tone. "One to your lawyer and another to an outside relative or other contact."

"Well, I don't have a lawyer," I told him, "But I need to reach my brother."

"Fine. Do you have his number?"

"Um, he's in Japan. Tokyo-3, actually."

"But you don't have his number?" the agent asked impatiently.

"Look, this is really messed up. I'm not some terrorist!"

"It's not my job to argue with this…"

"…but I really don't have my brother's phone number," I told him. "But is there any way you could reach him?"

"Miss, we're not an on-line search service here. You can ask your attorney to help you with this."

"But I told you I don't have a lawyer!"

"And well get one for you if you don't" the agent replied in a tired voice.

I tried to remember any details about NERV at Tokyo-3, anything that could help them. "Um, I don't have the number but you can contact his boss through the main NERV phone line." I tried. "Her name's Colonel Katsuragi!"

"Fine," replied the agent without even writing down what I told him. "We'll let you know." With that I was taken to another part of the building and placed in a small, concrete lined cell by myself. As I sat down on the mattress provided I watched the  
/steel cell door close on me, and wondered at this moment if I hadn't gone from frying pan to fire.

The entire episode had left me very confused about what was going on with me and what would happen next. Olivia had told me that I was "Important' and I suppose that also meant I was important to other people besides the Alliance. I didn't have a good  
/feeling at all about ending up in this new, actually prison-like prison, but by now I had gotten so used to being traded around that I didn't affect me as terribly as I thought it should have. Wait another week, I figured, and I'd probably end up  
/somewhere else.

Still this was very disappointing. Was the Alliance trying to hide me from the American authorities? I guess they were but then why? I thought they were all on the same side. I didn't know what else to do except just lay down on my new prison mattress  
/and just wait it out.

* * *

At about 8 PM one of the guards, a female one wearing a light blue police uniform, knocked on my cell door. "Miss Forrestal? Phone call."

Phone call? I jumped out of the bed and ran to where the guard held a cordless phone. Over the line was by-now a very familiar voice. "Hello?"

"Patrick!" I screamed.

"Erin!" he screamed back into the phone, just as happy to hear from me as I was from him. "Oh my God, it's good to hear from you!"

"Are you alright?" I asked. "They said you had an operation."

"It was pretty dicey for a while, but I'm okay now. Completely." Patrick's voice was confident and sure and that told me he had indeed recovered.

"Thank God! I was so worried and I didn't hear anything for so long!"

"I'm sorry," Patrick apologized, "but I was sort of out of it for a while. I asked about you and they had trouble reaching you until now. Are you okay?"

"Uh, not really," I told him, "At first they had a whole lot of questions about Dad and SEELE but then this morning I got arrested…again! They're pressing charges!"

"WHAT!?" my brother shouted in a furious tone. "Are you kidding me?"

"It's got to do with the attack on NERV when I came in," I struggled to explain. "They're saying it's terrorism."

"Jeez, you only killed the enemy's top guy," he spat out cynically. "Besides it's not like you destroyed the GeoFront yourself or anything. I don't believe this!"

"Anyway," I continued, "there's going to be something in court soon. They've got a lawyer for me but there's no else here." My guard had been slipping all throughout the conversation, and at this point I was tired and desperate to get out of being kept  
/prisoner. It was that and I really, really needed to be with my other half at this moment. "Patrick, " I pleaded. "Are you able to come out here? I really need to see you."

There was a pause on the phone and then "Yeah…I'll get out there as soon as I can. Just hang tight, okay?"

"Okay! Please get here soon!"

"I'll do my best to hurry…and I'll…I'll get help from the others here in Japan. I promise."

"Got it."

The guard gave me a visual signal to cut off the phone call and I gave Patrick a prolonged "Goodbye." I was reluctant to let the phone go and I know he was too. But we had to end the call and then the guard left me back by myself in my cell.

At least this cell had a window to the outside world, albeit a small one, and a sliver of moonlight snuck inside illuminating the little room as I lie there on the mattress and wonder what was going to happen next. I tried to hang onto hope, any little  
/thing that I could. Patrick sounded a lot better, and I hoped that his face had been at least fixed although I didn't hold out much for that. I tried not to think much more about it. I tried not to think about anything.

"Dear God," I prayed, "not sure what's going on but I'm desperate. Please help." That was the last thing I thought or said that night. Not long afterwards peace finally came to me and I managed to fall asleep.

* * *

In the morning there was another knock on the cell door. I was lying on the mattress and looked up as the door was opened, and inside walked two people. One was a tall Caucasian man with fair, slightly greying hair dressed in an expensive-looking business  
/suit, but the other person was….

"Maria!" I nearly screamed. Maria Vinson had come to see me.

Her face looked worn, like she had aged another ten years since I saw her last. Her black hair was mixed with strands of grey, and she had a certain slowness to her manner. But it was her. Dressed in a denim jacket and pants, she came over to me immediately.  
/"Erin?"

"Oh my God!"I nearly leaped out of bed and rushed over to her, embracing her tightly. She held me in her own arms.

I looked up at her as my emotions rolled forward like a hurricane. "Vance…Vance is…."

"I know dear," she told me as both sadness and relief held her face. "I know all about it now."

I wanted to say more. I wanted to say how sorry it was about Vance, and about what happened but I couldn't get the words out. Finally seeing someone from my past life was enough and I burst into tears, trembling and crying on Maria's shoulder for the  
/next few minutes as she held me there in the little cell.

It took me a bit to get calmed down but I finally did, and sat down along with the other two inside of the cell, the older man brining a chair with him from outside. The door was shut by the guards and he introduced himself.

"Miss Forrestal," he started with a firm but friendly voice, "my name is Arthur Fletcher. I'm an attorney and a friend of the Vinsons."

I looked at Maria, wondering if the Admiral was actually trying to help me after what I did back in Tokyo-3. She smiled and held my hand, giving me all of the reassurance I then needed.

The attorney continued. "We're going to try to get you out of here, and quickly," he told me. "I've already asked for an emergency hearing in front of a federal judge later this afternoon. But before I do that I need to know everything you can tell me  
/about what happened to you."

"That's quite a lot," I told him with no exaggeration.

"Well, do the best you can," Arthur encouraged, "and then I'll do the best that I can." He then pulled out a legal pad from his briefcase and a pen and looked up at me, and from that point I began to recall everything that I could about my encounters  
/with the evil organization known as SEELE.

Arthur Fletcher was true to his word, and by that four o'clock that afternoon we were seated in a courtroom in nearby Cambridge. Maria had brought a dress for me to wear, a modest black one with broad white collars along with a pair of simple polished  
/black flats. The outfit was drab and plain, but I got what the attorney was trying to do: make me look as innocent as possible in the courtroom in the hopes of obtaining the judge's mercy on Little Orphan Erin.

As I got dressed in the court's prisoner holding area and Maria helped me fix my hair, we talked and got caught up about what happened to her and to the Admiral. Because of Admiral Vinson's role within the Alliance, Maria herself was targeted by SEELE  
/and had to flee the Maine lake house after the incident at Tokyo-3 when Vance was killed. She had spent the next few months hiding out on ships and faraway places like Australia, and had only returned in the last week when it was finally safe. Once  
/Patrick heard from me that I had been taken by the FBI, he immediately asked for help from the Admiral and others at NERV, one of whom was the Vinson's attorney friend Arthur.

Maria Vinson had been through a lot, having to live on the run not long after finding out that the Admiral hadn't been telling her the truth what we were really doing at Second Branch, and in the beginning she had felt angry and hurt by being lied to  
/and for losing Vance. Her and the Admiral still weren't on the best of terms even now, but she had sought for herself what the truth was, however unpleasant, and in the end she had come to support the Admiral and the war he had needed to fight against  
/SEELE.

She also told me that she had actually met Patrick! Back in February she visited Tokyo-3, and had met both Patrick and his "lovely but strange blue-haired senorita." I told her about our own reunion and my worries about Patrick's current well-being, but  
/she encouraged me to have faith. "God would not have brought you two back together without having a happy end in mind." I sure hope that she was right.

* * *

We got to the courtroom punctually at Four O'Clock, and Mr. Fletcher was right there waiting for us at the defendants' table. A few feet to our right were the prosecutors, a group of two men and a woman in fancy business suits who all looked smugly confident.  
/I didn't have a great feeling about this and really hoped that Arthur was as good of a lawyer as he claimed to be.

"All rise!" the uniformed bailiff called out and we stood up from the table in unison, as did the prosecutors. There was nobody at all in the audience chairs behind us. "This court is now in session, Judge Rhonda Jackson presiding." A large middle-aged  
/black lady in judges robes came walking out from the doorway facing us, and promptly stepped up to the judge's podium and sat down. We all sat down as court began.

"Thank you, Jerry," she said to the bailiff in a sort of a folksy accent. "All right, let's get this done." She nodded to the prosecutors and one of them, the tallest one, again stood up.

"Your honor, the defendant Erin Elizabeth Forrestal is charged with Attempt or Conspiracy With Respect to Homicide in the commission of an act of Terrorism, under 18 US Code article 2332. The US attorney alleges that the defendant was a participant along  
/with others in an attack on the Tokyo-3 GeoFront on March 4th, 2016, where she employed a Weapon of Mass Destruction in an attack intended to cause mass casualties and destruction of property. During said event, a British national named Doctor Ravi  
/Viraat, who was a chief scientist of the NERV Organization at the time, was killed by a co-conspirator. Under the Response to Terrorism Framework Agreement of 1986, US citizens who are charged with crimes of terror against British nationals can be  
/brought to charges in US Federal Court, hence we are charging the defendant with conspiracy to commit terrorist acts under the US Code. We believe that evidence will show that she was a willing participant and had full knowledge of her actions at  
/that time."

"Thank you, Mr. Sullivan," the Judge responded without showing any particular emotion. "Defense?"

Arthur now stood up, a yellow legal pad in his hand. He also had on a fancy grey suit and dapper-looking eyeglasses, and I bit my tongue as he started, hoping that my white knight had come to save me.

"Thank you, your honor," he started. "The defense moves to dismiss all charges against my client. Miss Forrestal was acquired by the criminal organization known as SEELE while in a comatose state, and once revived was presented grossly false evidence  
/regarding SEELE's goals and objectives, especially in regard to the recent war between SEELE and the Alliance of Free Nations. Without access to contrary evidence and being compelled by SEELE through manipulation of information my client believed  
/that she was involved with the lawful recovery of the property of the United Nations. Furthermore once she discovered this was not the case, she was immediately made prisoner by SEELE itself. In summary she was given a false story without any contradicting  
/evidence, and once coming to the truth she acted accordingly."

"We also challenge," said Arthur as he looked at the opposing table of prosecutors, "the legality of the charges that the US attorney is presenting. Technically, my client is a Prisoner of War and what transpired on and before March 4 2016 was not a criminal  
/act on my client's part. Therefore the charges should be summarily dismissed."

Arthur stood down and the judge initially said nothing, but then pointed her gavel towards the prosecutors. "He's got a point," she said as the lead attorney wrinkled his nose and again stood up. "isn't this the incorrect venue for the criminal charges  
/you're seeking out?"

"Not at all, your honor," the attorney said smugly. "The organization known as SEELE was not a lawful party of war. It wasn't a nation-state but rather a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy of fellow travelers literally bent on world destruction. SEELE's  
/actions, especially concerning the Evangelion and events leading up to Second Impact, were not acts of war but sabotage and genocide of the highest order. The defendant was a willing participant in the conspiracy to steal weapons of mass destruction  
/and employ them against a wide range of targets."

My attorney stood up. "Objection, your honor. She did no such thing. In any case, Miss Forrestal is but fourteen years of age and hardly a willing participant in a conspiracy."

"We've prosecuted gang murders at ages younger than hers as adult crimes," the prosecution countered. "Besides, due to her father's deep involvement within SEELE's conspiracy her own participation extended well before the attack on Tokyo-3. She was a  
/willing participant."

"Your honor," Arthur persisted, "the US attorney had the option to charge Miss Forrestal in military court yet they chose not to do so even though such a venue would likely make their chances of a conviction easier. They picked this venue, a US Federal  
/district court, in order to maximize the publicity such a case would make and force the Alliance of Free Nations and the NERV organization to come to the aid of the defense and make a spectacle out of this for political gain."

"Politics has nothing to do with this!" objected the prosecutor.

"It's got everything to do with this!" countered Arthur "As I said, if you really wanted a conviction you could just charge her in military court under closed doors. The US government has convicted hundreds of accused terrorists under the same grounds  
/as this case, but what makes this different? This is about Evangelion."

The prosecutor then got nasty. "Your client pilots a nearly-invincible weapon that can destroy a city, you don't think that's something that should be kept hushed up, unless you've got something to hide, _Arthur!"_

My own lawyer ignored the challenge and put his attention back onto the judge. "Your honor, this courtroom is not the proper venue for what prosecution wants. This whole thing is propped up and designed to drag out for years as my client twists in the  
/wind for something she clearly had no major part in. The charges should be dismissed!"

"Your honor, they just want this covered up! The true nature of the Evangelion and how it works, and why these children are involved. Too many people have died over this, don't let them get away with it!"

"Alright, that's enough. Both of you!" the judge admonished from the bench. "Prosecution has a valid point, we bring things to court in order to shine a light so that justice can be done, and much of what's been involved with this…Evangelion issue has  
/been kept quiet for far too long."

"Perhaps so, your honor," Arthur perked up, "But there's better venues than a trumped-up criminal case to explore this."

The prosecutor pointed a finger right at me. "People died because of what this person did!"

"Shut up, both of you!" said the judge. "Y'all are not going to try this by argument this afternoon."

"Your honor," Arthur said, this time more politely, "may I approach the bench?" The judge nodded and then my lawyer walked briskly towards the judge's podium, followed by the prosecutor. I couldn't hear what they were saying but the three of them where  
/having something of an argument in whispers. After about a minute of this the judge stood up and told the both of them "see me in my chambers in five minutes. Mr. Fletcher, please ask your client to join us." Both of the lawyers went to their respective  
/tables as Arthur motioned to me to stand up and follow him.

Within five minutes the judge, my attorney, Maria and myself were in the judge's private office, joined by Mr. Sullivan. There weren't enough chairs for all of us to sit down, so they offered both Maria and I each one of the chairs while Arthur and the  
/head prosecutor Mr. Sullivan stood up in the crowded room as the Judge was behind her desk. Again, I sat nervously as complete strangers argued my fate.

"Your honor this entire episode is a clown show," Arthur told the judge, this time speaking much more informally than he was in open court. "They don't care about my client, this is just maneuvering to get a high-profile case regarding current events  
/that can twist in the media for years."

"There you go again, Arthur," said the head prosecutor. "This is not about politics or media coverage. People were killed, horribly, and the defendant was part of that."

"No she wasn't," Arthur shot back. "SEELE ordered her to kill enemy pilots as part of the raid. She refused and they threw her in captivity as a result. I'd hardly call that conspiring."

"So she got cold feet," remarked Sullivan. "She had every opportunity to warn NERV of impending danger that day."

By this point my lawyer was getting exasperated as the judge sat idly by and watched the arguments unfold. "I can't believe this! Did you even read the deposition we filed? My client was lied to by nearly everyone, including her own father, about the  
/nature of what she as doing and even about the existence of her own family. Due to her father's mess-up of his science project my client fell into a coma, then was sent off to SEELE who then after she woke up promptly kidnapped her and lied to her  
/a lot more. She's nearly raped, she's nearly killed, then she's sent into Tokyo-3 to go steal her own Evangelion when she's caught up in this raid by another enemy controlled…robot?" He turned briefly to me. "is that what you properly call these Evangelions?"

"She's not a robot," I answered. "We just call them units."

"Okay, well, 'unit' then. They order her to kill other kids with her own unit but she refuses, then when she returns they put her in a jail cell. A friendly agent breaks her out, whereupon they return to their Evangelion unit and again steal it, then  
/use it against the head of SEELE by drowning him in a river of volcanic lava, without which none of us would be standing here arguing about anything! You should be giving her a fucking medal, not throwing felonies at her!"

Sullivan was firm. "You know as well as I do that's not what the law allows. If you're so sure of your defense of her, then let's go to trial and have it out in court."

"She's been through enough," Arthur countered. "This girl has seen more danger than you or I ever will in our lifetimes yet she's without a home or family because of all of this. If she needs to be punished that's certainly sufficient."

The prosecutor turned to the judge. "Your honor, this is pointless."

"I agree," the judge said, then she turned to Arthur. "May I address your client?"

I was about to nod yes, elated that at least someone wanted to know what I thought about the whole thing but Arthur again held me back. "With all due respect, your honor, my client shouldn't be compelled to answer. Last time I checked the UN world government  
/was down in flames, and we've got a Fifth Amendment again."

"I'm not an idiot, Mr. Fletcher," the judge snapped. "But long before I got this job I was a ADA for juvenile cases as well as a judge. I know where the line's drawn."

"I have to agree with Arthur," protested the prosecutor. "It's very irregular to have the judge interrogate the defendant directly out of court."

"We're all sitting her talking about two-hundred foot tall walking weapons of mass destruction that can vaporize giant monsters while being piloted by teenagers," she argued. "This whole damn thing's irregular!"

"But still…" The judge held up her hand to silence him, and then she turned her attention to me.

"Erin?" she asked me, "Do you understand what's going on?"

"I think so," I told her directly. "It seems like I'm in a lot of trouble."

"That's a matter of perspective," she said to me, "but the point of a courtroom is to make things fair on your behalf, especially if you're accused of a crime. Let me ask you, where's home for you?"

"Well," I started to talk but I also chocked up a bit. I had been trying as hard as I could to hold back emotions but they were leaking, and tears started up in my eyes. "it was..it was NERV Second Branch, in Nevada. But it's not there anymore, it's gone."

"I see. And how about your mom and dad?"

"My mom's been gone since I was four years old," I said, surprised I still had a voice to speak. "My dad disappeared along with Second Branch."

"Anyone else?"

"I have a twin brother, in Japan. He's also a pilot, and he just got out of the hospital."

"So who's taking care of you now?"

"Um, no one is."

It was then that Maria stood up and spoke to the judge. "I'm doing it," she told her, to everyone's surprise including my own. Maria looked down at me and smiled, then told the judge "we have a house in Southern Maine, next to Lake Arrowhead. A hundred  
/acres in the woods, lakeside. It's beautiful," she said. "I…I lost my only son to this thing. The least I can do now is take care of her."

"I see," the judge replied with a quiet, thinking for a few moments as she toyed with her gavel. The whole room was quiet as she decided what would happen next. I glanced again at Maria, wondering was she serious about taking me in, but she just smiled  
/back at me.

"I think what you need is stability," the judge said to me softly. Then Judge Jackson turned to my lawyer.

"I can suggest something that would be win-win here," she said, then she turned to the prosecutor. "Allow them to plead down to a lesser charge."

Sullivan was incredulous. "Like what, _misdemeanor_ terrorism?"

"How about Conspiracy to commit mayhem," Arthur helpfully suggested. "That's on the books."

"Ridiculous," scoffed the prosecutor. "That's a watered-down charge for pled-down public disorder, not for capital murder."

"I think a strong argument could be made that this was war, and subject to the laws of it," the judge said. "But I think you owe it to the defendant to expedite this. Arthur, would you agree to a plead-down?"

My attorney scratched his head. "I would, but no jail time. She's done enough of that."

"Oh, my God you're not serious?" objected the prosecutor.

"I'd be open to house arrest, for one year," replied the judge more calmly.

"Your honor," argued Sullivan, "this kid pilots a weapon of mass destruction in a bloodthirsty attack and you're going to just confine her to some house in the country?"

Judge Jackson folder her hands and looked at the prosecutor. "If the problem is that she causes trouble when piloting this thing, then let's keep the two apart. I'll agree to a restraining order where she doesn't pilot and she doesn't come within, oh  
/say, fifty miles of anything related to the Evangelion. If she's not able to pilot she doesn't seem like much of a threat here. So do we have a deal?"

Sullivan was unfortunately firm. "Respectfully, no. I don't need a trophy bad enough to go along with burying this. Lives were lost here and…"

Before the prosecutor could finish there was a knock on the judge's door and then it opened, and in came the younger of the prosecutor's assistants, a blonde-haired woman. "Your honor, begging your pardon but there's a phone call for Mr. Sullivan."

"I told you no calls!" the prosecutor growled.

"Sir," she said as she handed her mobile phone to him. "It's the AG herself."

The prosecutor's eyebrows shot up, as it was the Attorney General of the US on the phone. "Yes, ma'am" he answered. He stayed on the phone for a good couple of minutes listening to his top boss, occasionally trying to interject but unable to say much.  
/Finally there was some grudging agreement in his voice and he hung up the call, looking dejected. He looked at Arthur and then finally at me.

"You, young lady, seem to have some friends in high places." Turning again to the judge, he simply said "Accepted."

* * *

Of course, they didn't let me go quite so easily. I still had to "outprocess" from the jail and that took another night of staying there. Still, finally I had hope, and I was able to sleep much easier that evening.

In the morning I received another visitor, this one was a prison nurse with a funny looking device in her hand. Without much introduction she took my vital signs and then asked me to roll up my right sleeve. She then put her device against my lower arm  
/and I suddenly felt a painful punch into my skin. It felt itchy and I rubbed it where I felt the wound, then noticed that there was a small object inside.

"What is that?" I asked the nurse.

"GPS tracker," she relied matter-of-factly. "Part of your release conditions." Then she smiled at me and said "congratulations, you can leave now."

Maria met me just inside the prison exit and handed me another bag of clothes, this set consisting of a green polo and white tennis skirt, along with a new pair of runners. I gladly changed out of my prison uniform then handed all of that back to the  
/guard at the "outprocessing" desk with a broad smile, hoping never to see this place again.

Once outside the prison doorway I took a long breath and let it go, basking in the sunlight of that morning. I'll always remember the day and how blue the sky was and how pretty the clouds looked overhead as the sun rose and the wind blew gently. I knew  
/that I wasn't entirely free: I still had a house arrest sentence and would have my wings clipped for a while, but I felt free for the first time in such a very long while. As I stretched my legs out in the sunlight Maria's phone rang and she picked  
/it up. After a quick conversation she hung up the phone and turned to me. "Guess what?" she asked me with a smile.

We took a short drive in a fancy black-colored sedan that had stickers of four white stars on either side, Maria had explained that it was an Admiral's staff car. Certainly it was quite nice in the back with soft leather seats and even a computer and  
/monitor. The car took us back to Alliance Base North and then to the airfield, where we parked and waited by the runway.

Not long after we arrived a small white jet landed and then taxied over to where we were parked. Once it stopped, ground crew wheeled around a stairway to a door on the right side of the aircraft. The door swung open as a female crew member checked everything,  
/and then went back inside.

A moment later someone else came walking out of the door and onto the stairway. It was Patrick! Dressed in a sport coat and khaki slacks, he looked quite dapper but most importantly was his face: it looked just like before, as if it had never melted off!  
/I couldn't believe it! Not wanting to wait even a moment to see him I came bounding towards the stairway and tackled him as soon as his feet met the ground.

"Erin!" he said excitedly, his arms wrapped around me. "You're out?!"

"Yes! They got me out last night," I told him as I touched his face, just to be sure it was alright. "I'm free to go! Well, sort of."

 _"Sort of?"_

"There's all these conditions and stuff. They chipped me too. Anyway, I'll tell you everything on the way home."

"Great," he said. "They gave me a place here on the base I can stay at, so I'm close by. Let's go there!"

"Oh no, you don't!" I told him, my smile stretched out from ear to ear. "You're going with _us_!" Before Patrick could ask who she meant he saw Maria Vinson emerge from the rear of the sedan. "Mrs. Vinson!"

"Hello, Patrick," she said to him "and please, Maria is fine!"

Puzzled, he looked back at me. "What's going on?"

I squeezed him as hard as I could, letting him on what Maria and I had discussed in the car on the way to the airfield to pick him up. "I'm living at the Vinson's house and now so are _you_!"

"What? Really?!" At first Patrick seemed unsure about all of this. "Mrs. Vinson, I mean Maria, is that okay?"

"It is," she replied. "I would be very glad to have both of you at the house on the lake." Patrick looked down at me, his eyes quivering with emotion. "In Maine?"

"Not far from here," I said softly. We looked at each other, knowing what this really meant for us. "We can be together then?" he asked.

I gave him a big squeeze. "Yes!"

"And we can do all of that stupid stuff together, like go swimming and get lost in the woods and stay up all night and tell each other stories and drink root beer floats and play together and all of that?"

We could be family now, the way we always should have been.

"Yes! Yes, yes, YES!"

Patrick was so excited that he picked me up and swung me high in the air, both of us laughing in delight. I didn't feel hollow anymore, and neither did he.

"Okay," he said. "Then let's go home." And so we did, and we spent the two hours on the way to the Vinson's lake house in the back of the Admiral's sedan, laughing and playing like we had known each other our whole lives. That day our puzzles were finally  
/complete.


	17. Dreams and Legends

Those first few weeks at the Vinsons' house, _our_ house as I could now say, was a flurry of cleaning up and moving things around and settling in. Some months before the house had been ransacked by UN and SEELE agents hunting for Maria and the Admiral  
and they left the rooms in a complete mess. Maria had only returned home three weeks ago and while managing to clean up much of the damage on her own it didn't look the way it had before on the inside, as the Vinsons' pursuers were deliberately violent  
in trashing anything that looked delicate. Much of the decorations and keepsakes that gave Maria's house such a charming quality had been destroyed and while she had gone to great lengths to try and fix things Patrick and I needed to pitch in to help  
nearly as soon as we arrived.

As far as our own accommodations went, the guest room with the garden motif and attached bathroom became my own room and I was not at all disappointed with that. Patrick was offered Vance's own bedroom by Maria, but he immediately refused and suggested  
the attic would be a better spot despite him having to go downstairs to use a bathroom.

So it took us a while to put together everything needed to make the old house fully livable again, and that meant the three of us, Patrick and Maria and I spent a lot of time together working. Patrick was surprisingly adept at home repairs, having learned  
by making fixes to his uncle's mountain cabin. I pitched in as much as I could, and while I didn't know the first thing about fixing up a house it felt good to actually work with my hands, doing things like painting and cleaning up. I didn't feel  
useless for once.

While during the days we'd be working on the house those nights were spent close to the fireplace with Patrick and I sitting on the floor, huddled by embers and sipping on homemade hot cocoa that Maria made for us. Memories of our time in SEELE's dungeon  
were still close by and often we just sat there and listened to the fire, leaning on each other during the night. I suppose it was then when we really bonded, as by now I felt I could trust him and he could trust me. We became close in the way we  
should have always been.

The only break in our routine was the twice-daily period Patrick would get on his satellite phone and speak with Rei back in Japan. Their conversations weren't all that long but spent in hushed tones, speaking a mixture of Japanese and English. He was  
doing his best to keep up spirits and be encouraging to both Rei and himself but I knew that he missed her very much, especially by that look on his face when he hung up the phone, his expression of frustration and sadness from being separated from  
someone he loved.

I knew that feeling too, but in my case it couldn't be fixed with a phone call. It couldn't be fixed at all.

After about a month we managed to get things in the house much improved as we finally ran out of things to fix and clean iit was that we had finally settled in, or maybe it was the weather outside, as it had been raining for over a week  
straight and I hadn't been outside much, but I began to feel a chill inside of me, one that I couldn't quite get rid of.

It wasn't that I didn't like the rain: hey, I grew up in a desert! I think the first time we got a big storm at the Maine house I ended up playing outside in it, happily twirling around as falling raindrops soaked me until Patrick literally dragged me  
inside. That foolish thing had given me a cold for a week, but I hadn't minded as I loved the feeling of the cool rain falling on my face. After a while though the rain ceased to be special and became just grey and gloomy and I think that's when I  
started slowing down.

There was a day that I woke up and just decided not to go outside my room. I didn't come down for breakfast, and despite both Patrick and Maria knocking on my door I didn't go out at all. Instead I just slouched down on the floor, dressed in an oversized  
nightgown and leggings and spent the whole day just hugging my knees close. My mind was empty except for a feeling of sadness that I just couldn't shake. That feeling stayed with me the whole day and night, and while I knew the others were concerned  
for me I just didn't want to talk to anyone or do anything. So I lie awake in my bed and just thought about the past.

It was Vance that was on my mind. Now living in this house, everything that I saw or felt here reminded me of him. Maybe I had been too busy before with all of the cleanups and settling in, but now with nothing to do the memories came back of that one  
time I was here before last year. I remembered feeling warm but not hot, I remembered playing with him on the very bed that I now slept in, and I remembered our first kiss by the lake.

But he was gone, and it was so hard because I knew how much both Patrick and Maria also loved him. I couldn't bring up how I felt with either of them, lest my emotions that I kept all bottled up started raging out and drown either of them. They both had  
their reasons to not talk much about Vance as we carried on with life at the lake house, and I didn't want to distract either of them with my problems. But I felt terrible.

On the following morning Patrick was persistent in reaching out to me, finally knocking not on my door but on my outside window. Startled, I turned around and saw him making goofy faces outside as he stood on the roof in an attempt to lighten my spirits.  
He kept at it until I finally giggled and opened the window for him to come inside.

"You wouldn't open your door," he explained, "so I figured drastic measures were required."

I sat down on the bed, sighing deeply but at least with a smile on my face. "Thanks," I told him.

"Well, I'm here to rescue you. So how about we get out of this place and get lost in the woods?" I nodded, glad that someone knew how to break my walls down.

I changed into a flannel shirt, blue jeans and sneakers and followed Patrick as we walked together into the countryside next to the house. The weather was nice and cool and a gentle breeze few by as we went deeper into the forest, climbing over fallen  
trees and rocks and pushed through the terrain. We didn't say much at first, but I knew that Patrick knew that something was eating me.

Suddenly he stopped and put a finger to his lips, motioning for me to be quiet and still. Then he silently crept up towards another fallen tree. From about thirty feet away I could see the shape of a brown and black animal peering at us with two small  
black eyes: it was a raccoon, and rather than be scared of us and run off it curiously stared at Patrick as he got closer.

Apparently prepared for this, my brother reached into his shirt pocket and grabbed out a pack of salty crackers. Unwrapping the plastic wrapper, Patrick carefully approached the raccoon and just within a few feet of him placed the crackers down on top  
of a log. I watched as Patrick then backed off and waited, and within a minute the raccoon jumped onto the log and sniffed at the crackers. Satisfied that it was edible, it took a piece into its tiny hands and munched on it, then grabbed the rest  
and looked at Patrick and at me. I thought the little guy looked really cute, and strangely unafraid of two humans in the woods. In another moment the racoon heard something in the forest and then quickly scampered off and out of sight.

I looked at Patrick in amazement. "How did you get him to do that?"

"They eat freaking anything," he told me. "Used to always bait those things while I was in the cabin in Big Bear. Give it another week of doing this and he'll be eating out of trash at home."

My bad mood was lifted a little bit more after the moment with the racoon, and I just relaxed and leaned on the log as Patrick stood around and scanned the woods for anything else. As he did so a terrible thought just came to me.

"What happened to the EVA?" I cried aloud.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh my God! I've been so busy with everything that I completely forgot about her! What happened to our EVA?"

Patrick laughed out loud. "Some pilot you are!"

"I'm serious! Is she okay?"

"She is," my brother answered. "They flew it back from Norway a little while ago, she's back at Tokyo-3 now."

"How did they get her out of the mountain? I mean with neither of us there…"

"Rei synched with it and moved her to the surface," he explained, "then they loaded it in an airplane and flew it back. That's all."

"She can _do_ that?"

"Rei can actually sync with any EVA now, so yeah. But the unit's okay, mostly repaired from all of the damage by now I think."

"I'm sorry, I should have thought about this earlier."

"No worries, I know it's been difficult."

"What do you mean?"

"Living in Vance's house," he said.

I didn't reply at first, but I guess the cause of my gloom was obvious. I stayed perched on the fallen log and Patrick came and sat down next to me.

"I wasn't here before, but even so it's still hard to be here now," he continued. "It's hard to see Maria every day too, knowing all of what happened."

My exasperation finally boiled to the surface. "Why did all of this have to happen, anyway?" I blurted out loud? "So many stupid things with, with Mom and Dad and..and…EVA and all of these bad things that happened! Vance shouldn't have had to die! Second  
Branch shouldn't have had to, like, fall into some black hole or anything! And the whole world goes to war and everything! For what?! Just over EVA?! That's it?!"

"And yet we survived…"

"Sometimes I wish I wouldn't have," I told him bluntly. "Maybe it would have been better if I was still stuck in that coma, sleeping through everything."

Patrick nudged closer to me, patting me on my leg and trying to be encouraging. "I'm glad you didn't," he told me. "Without you we couldn't have put an end to all of this."

"Really?" I asked him.

"Erin," he said to me, "despite all of the hell you got put through when we needed it you took the big ol' bad guy and dunked him into a volcano."

"So?"

"So, that's you, Frodo Baggins, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Pretty good in my book."

I just stared in shock at him after he said that. But then I realized how completely absurd everything was, not only me complaining about everything I had been through but also how it had all worked out not completely unlike some sort of legendary story.  
And it had all worked out, somehow. I couldn't help but laugh at it, and it was the first really good laugh I'd had in a long while.

"Feel better?" Patrick asked.

I smiled at him. "Yeah, I guess so. But what do we do now?"

He looked admiringly all around us. "You're not okay with living here?"

"It's not that! I love this place, I really do!" I told him. "But, well, maybe that I seem to be done with EVA and all I'm just not sure what's supposed to happen next."

"Did you ever want anything before EVA?"

"Did you?"

"I wanted a _real_ family," Patrick told me. "And I got that now. As far as the rest of life goes I'm not really sure but there's nothing wrong with exploring a bit. How about you? Was there anything you really ever wanted before?"

"A gold medal in gymnastics."

Patrick cocked his head. "Well?"

"No way," I told him. "Not anymore."

"Why not?"

"I'm too far away from that now," I said, with a resigned tone in my voice. "It's been like, what, a year since I've done any training and I'd have to start nearly from scratch after that much time off. Besides, back then I had my own private coach, and  
my own private gym. I'm pretty sure they don't have good gymnastics programs out here in rural Maine."

Patrick hopped off the log and turned around, facing me. "But right now you've got nothing but time on your hands, you're certainly not weak, and there's no one around to tell you 'no,' is there?" He meant Dad, of course, as no matter how good I ever  
ways Dad never let me compete. Dad wasn't around now to object, was he?

I still didn't say anything but Patrick stepped forward and stood right in front of me. "Maybe it wouldn't be like it was for you before, but at least you'd know you gave it your best shot," he told me. "Besides, after everything you told me about this  
part of you, I'd really like to see you try."

"You would, huh?"

"I think you'd be happy, even if you didn't go very far. I know I'd be happy."

"Seeing me compete?"

"No, but I'd be watching you wear leotards every day and I could definitely deal with that," he said with a smirk.

"You pervert!" I shouted and slammed my brother hard against his head as I jumped off the log. I hit him a few more times too until we both busted up laughing. Such a tease he was.

Despite his lecherous adolescent mind Patrick was right, if I'd ever get a chance to get back my childhood dream it was going to be now. I didn't want any more regrets in my life, I had too much already. But how to go about chasing my dream again?

The next morning I woke up early, changed into a t-shirt and leggings, and found a patch of grass outside the house. Before I got started I checked to be sure I was alone, and then spent the next forty-five minutes giving myself the best stretchout that  
I possibly could on the cool grass outside the lake house.

It felt strange going through what used to be my daily routine, and found I could still do some things but others, like the splits, took some work and was painful as heck. But I needed to warm up nice and good to truly test my current abilities and see  
if this was all really hopeless or not.

Once I felt warmed up and limber I stood back up and then just looked at the grass in front of me, concentrating on what I would need to do. What used to be a simple flip now seemed like defying gravity. If I could at least get that part back, I told  
myself, there was still hope. I arched my back and put both my hands up, and then let myself roll into it.

The first attempt didn't go well, and found myself flung to my side as I lost my footing. Undeterred, I stood back up and tried it again, and again. On the sixth or seventh try I was able to fully flip over 360 and land on my feet, something I had not  
struggled with since I was six.

Elated to pass that test, I then moved up to multiple flips, first two, then three, then up to six in a row. Shockingly I was able to do it, and I could feel it all coming back. What had worried me most about trying gymnastics again after a year off was  
whether or not I had lost muscle memory, as things that were so natural to me now seemed daunting. But after being able to keep somersaulting without losing balance and falling over was a big relief.

I needed one more test to make this work, and moved over to a fence nearby. It was wooden and not very smooth but figured I needed to at least try it and bounded up to the top rung of the fence. Taking a few steps at a time, I steadied myself and wondered  
if my beam skills were still available to me. Arching my back, I stretched and went backwards and tried to somersault my way behind.

Again I found myself tossed to the ground, but I wasn't going to let go that easily. Bouncing up again to the top plank of the fence I tried it again, this time facing forward to give myself a little easier approach. I leaned forward and then pushed myself  
onto the wood in front and then flipping over, landing on my feet again with a huge bobble. It was then when I heard someone say "wow!" and I turned around to see Patrick standing on the grass.

"Damn, sis, you didn't tell me you were _that_ good?"

"You kidding me," I said to him as I jumped down from the fence. "This is shit compared to what I could do."

We approached each other as he thought about my performance. "What do you think?"

I looked back at the fence I had just somersaulted over, knowing that I had crossed a hurdle. "It felt good. Super sloppy, but good."

Patrick then put his hand on my shoulder and smiled. "Then go chase it, Tiger!"

I spoke to Maria about finding a gym and a coach and while she didn't really know anything about gymnastics she did suggest going to Lake Arrowhead and trying the county recreation department to see if they had anything like a gym program. It was a start.

The good thing about my house arrest conditions were that if anything was education-related it qualified as an excuse to go away from the house just as long as I kept a distance from anything EVA-related. That meant I couldn't go into or anywhere around  
Cambridge, Massachusetts where the former NERV First Branch was, but the town of Lake Arrowhead was far away from that. It was however a small place with few children living there, so my hopes weren't high that I'd find anything there.

One afternoon Maria drove the three of us to town and together we found the community center. We walked inside and looked around: it was an old gymnasium for what had once been a high school, now relegated to after-school activities for kids and other  
events for senior citizens. We found an office where a older woman showed us a schedule of activities, "GYMNASTICS" was listed on the paper at 4:00 that afternoon. There was no other description.

So we waited until just before four and then found the "gymnastics" class: a collection of four- and five-year-olds doing tumbling on foam gym pads, taught by a nice but sort of strange middle-aged lady. Well, that wasn't going to work. The group of us  
decided that this hadn't panned out and were about to leave until the administrator lady suggested I could also talk to Miss Keiko. At the mention of that Patrick's eyes brightened up, as he had little chance to speak to anyone Japanese since returning  
to the USA.

We found Miss Keiko teaching a class of senior citizens physical exercises and waited patiently until she was done with the class. "Miss" wasn't quite representative, as she was about fifty years old, petite with long black hair and wearing a tight black  
top and black leggings with runners, and she had a figure that indicated she was still in good physical shape.

"Hi," I introduced myself to her after her class ended. "The office said I could speak to you about gymnastics."

"Oh, really?" she replied, speaking slightly accented English. She looked me over and then said "I guess you're not going for the Tumbling Tots program, are you?"

I smiled and laughed just a little. "No, miss. Actually, I'm looking for a gym to train for competition. Do you know of anything around here?"

"Here, no, I'm afraid. For a good gym you'll need to go to Boston or that area." That was the answer I didn't want to hear.

"I can't go to Boston, or Cambridge," I told her. "Um, I'm not allowed."

"Not allowed?! How are you not allowed?"

At that point Patrick intervened and greeted her again, this time speaking Japanese. Surprised at first to hear him speak, Miss Keiko and Patrick engaged in a short conversation as he explained our situation to her, although I guess my brother probably  
left out the parts about us being EVA pilots. Afterwards Miss Keiko addressed me again.

"Okay, let's talk. How long did you train for?"

"Eight years," I told her.

"What level did you reach?"

"I never reached a level," I confessed. "My dad paid for the coaches and lessons but never let me compete."

"That's quite unusual," Keiko pondered. "Look, maybe I could help, but it's been years since I've actually taught gymnastics of any kind. I'm not unwilling but I'd have to know you're serious about this."

"What if I prove it to you?"

"Alright. This place used to be a high school gymnasium and they still have the spring floor. Perhaps I could see you there."

After a few minutes we found the floor area, it was not in great shape but at least it was there and working. Then I properly warmed up, still wearing the t-shirt and leggings I came in with. I had no chalk and was going barefoot but I had to give this  
the best shot I could. After I finished stretching out I signaled to Patrick and he queued up a music file on his phone and attached a small speaker as I walked out to the center of the spring floor.

For the next four minutes I did a floor routine that I had practiced for the last two weeks at home. With no gymnastics apparatus available, floor exercise was all I could work with and I still remembered much of what I was taught back in Nevada. I bounced,  
flipped, and tumbled to the music playing out of Patrick's makeshift audio system as Miss Keiko silently watched. My performance was sloppy and rusty as hell but I tried my best and hoped for the best, and at the end of the routine I stood and waited  
as she thought a moment to herself. I didn't have a good feeling about it but tried to smile nonetheless.

Keiko took a long sigh and then gave me her honest evaluation. "You've got good skills but you're very out of practice."

"I know. I took a whole year off. I got kind of sick and stuff."

"Well, you've got potential, I can see that," she remarked. "Getting back to speed would take a while for you, and you're at that age where you're still growing and maturing."

"I know I don't have much time," I told her, "but I never got to complete until now. I just want a chance."

"Does it matter how you compete?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Let me explain," said the coach. "If you start now, the gymnastics federation rules are that you can't start any higher than Level Four."

More bad news. "Level Four? That's kid's stuff! I'm way past that!"

"I realize that from watching you," Keiko continued. "But those are the federation rules and they don't make very many exceptions."

"How long would it take me to reach Elite?"

"You couldn't jump more than one level a quarter, so you're looking at two years."

My voice shot out in exasperation. "Two years?! I'll be nearly seventeen by then!"

"Exactly," said the coach, "and even then at the lower levels you're in competition against girls that could be half your age, with skill sets far below what you know now. It would be several steps back for you."

At that moment gravity finally set in. "Then I'm screwed," I said, knowing that the dream was dead after all. I closed my eyes and shook my head, feeling terrible. I really had wanted this, and now the door had been slammed right in front of me.

"Fine," I stammered, walking off the floor towards Patrick as he handed me my hoodie sweatshirt. "I guess it wasn't going to work anyway."

"You haven't let me finish yet," Keiko continued. Without saying anything further I put on my sweatshirt and listened.

"You took a year off," she told me, "and getting back to speed for this is going to be hard. It's worse on apparatus, as it's not just recovering your skills but also your safety I'm concerned with. You're used to doing advanced routines and you'll struggle  
to get back you skills, but doing that also means taking a lot of chances. You're going to fall a lot."

"I had really good balance before," I commented.

"Perhaps, but getting back on beam will be very difficult after such a long absence. I actually don't suggest returning to artistic gymnastics," concluded Keiko.

The dream really was dying now and I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, despite my own swearing to myself that I'd never cry again.

"But that's all I know," I protested.

"I watched your performance out there on the floor and despite being out of step a few times I could tell your training was very strong," said Keiko. "Most girls don't like floor exercise yet you took to it very well."

"I've always liked floor."

"Then have you ever considered Acro?"

"Acro? You mean _acrobatic_?" Acrobatic gymnastics was the "old style" of the sport before there were balance beams and uneven bars, made up of tumbling skills that resembled cheerleading more than anything else. "I've never done it."

"Acro Gymnastics is actually like a more advanced form of the floor exercise, using many of the skills but more dynamic and aggressive, and much more creative. If you want to get back into the sport you should concentrate in an area that you have a strength  
in."

"But I'd then be starting from zero," I told her. "Wouldn't I have the same problem here as with regular 'nastics?"

"Because Acro is trying to become a more popular sport their federation has different rules for the gymnasts," Keiko told me. "Unlike artistic where you have to follow set levels, Acro is more free-form and you can start competition at a higher level.  
With some training we could start you further up."

I had to admit it sounded attractive, a new option that I had not considered. "Did you coach this before?" I asked.

"In Japan, yes, years ago. I'm currently retired since I left Japan but for a good student I would be willing to try this again. There's something else." Keiko motioned towards Patrick. "Is he also a gymnast?"

"Who, me?" asked Patrick. "Um, I don't fit into the little costumes."

"Ha, ha," I said sarcastically. "No, miss. He's good at a lot of stuff but not this."

But Keiko seemed very interested in my brother anyway. "Erin," she asked, "do you think he could lift you?"

"Oh, yeah," I said enthusiastically, "We horse around at home all of the time." I was true, as Patrick and I would climb trees outside of the lake house, and it wasn't at all unusual for him to give me a boost upwards. Patrick was actually quite strong  
for his age.

"Can you show me?"

Both Patrick and I shrugged our shoulders, unsure of where this was going. But just like back at home I let Patrick give me a boost by lifting me up by the feet with his right hand and he quickly brought me to stand on his shoulders. He stood carefully  
while I balanced myself, then I even showed off a little by going to just one foot and lifting my other leg high in the air. I then plummeted downward and Patrick caught me in his arms in a basket catch, neatly setting me back on my feet. Miss Keiko  
seemed pleased as punch.

"Wonderful!" she said. "Just perfect."

We were beginning to see just where this was headed, "Um, look," Patrick told the coach, "I'm not doing cheerleading."

"This isn't cheerleading," Keiko said, gleeful to find not just one but two new students. "This is mixed-pairs Acro."

"Mixed-pairs?" I asked, "as in boy-girl?"

"Yes! Patrick," she explained to my brother. "Think of this as pairs figure skating but no ice."

"But silly costumes…"

"Patrick, shut it," I carped back to him, and then turned back to the coach. "This is an actual sport?"

"It is, and I coached it in Japan for several years before coming to the USA. And then you two come walking right in here in the middle of nowhere. Miss Erin," she told me, "if you want to really complete, and even have a chance to win something important,  
I think I can help!"

Suddenly I felt better about my chances than ever before, even better than when I was little. It just depended on one thing. "Hey," I said to my brother. "What do you think? Really?"

Patrick at first wanted to make some other kind of smart remark but I looked at him with a serious glint in my eye, and knew me well enough even now to know what I really meant and wanted. Standing there and giving the whole matter some consideration,  
he looked at me and finally said "I suppose this beats piloting."

"I suppose not quite as dangerous," I quipped. "But really, are you in?" He gave me a look, and then just a quiet nod. Patrick was often frivolous and rarely serious, but if he managed to actually shut up about a subject I knew he meant it.

With a broad smile I turned to my new coach. "So, when do we start?"

 _After another long absence we're finally back, I seem to have an incredibly active life with family and work keeping me quite busy. Nonetheless I've found the time and here we are with another chapter as Erin and Patrick deal with "life after EVA." EVA is not entirely done with them yet, however._

 _The original plan with The Other Side of Me was to end this story at 20 chapters, we may go to extend just a couple more as plans to do a short story centered on the new cast ensemble will be folded into this story instead. That means a likely completion date of Spring 2018. I still have designs on a last story to wrap up the Patrick/Rei relationship that should fill out the rest of next year. So we're looking at something like 200k words on this story, and perhaps another 200k on the last one. If that works out, that means Blue Rose stories will be up ta a solid Million words. Wow._

 _On another note like a lot of you I'm still disappointed that it's taken over five years to get a new Evangelion film out of Khara. We're told that it's in progress, but the anticipation is painful. Hopefully we'll see some further news on this project soon._

 _Thanks again for everyone's support and we'll see you soon with the next installment._


	18. Fifteen Candles

For that summer I regressed back to being a six-year old as we would spend our days playing and swimming in the lake by our house without a care. Patrick and I spent nearly all of our time together, frolicking about as we built a tree house and a swing just outside our place, and then on some nights we would set a pitfire close to the edge of the water and huddle close to it as we gazed at the brilliant stars above us in the summer sky. Several days a week we made the drive to Lake Arrowhead where Coach Keiko got us both to speed on what we now called Acro, and while the training was difficult I knew it was what I wanted. Surprisingly Patrick also took to it quite well, as learning the basics of tumbling seemed easy for him.

For the most part it was Patrick and I that whole time, spending time together playing and talking and even taking naps together in a hammock strung between two trees in the warm sun. The weather was comfortable enough that I spent practically the whole season wearing nothing but either swimwear or leos (of which I had started a new collection) and thoughts of the horrible events that brought us here were finally fleeing far away, or at least they seemed to.

But Patrick still had part of his life far away, and the twice-daily calls continued throughout the summer. If there was another advantage to having Miss Keiko as a coach it was being able to learn a bit of Japanese while we had our sessions and with my brother as a tutor that became much easier than I'd ever thought. After a few months I was at the point with the language when Patrick was on the phone with Rei that I could understand bits of what they were saying to each other. Lots of things said between the two of them like "I miss you," and "I'm cold" despite the warm weather, I knew the pain of their separation despite all of Patrick's efforts to feign that everything was "cool."

At some point that pain got almost unbearable for him, and then Rei's school had their summer break and Patrick was promptly off to Japan for a couple of weeks. It was the second trip abroad he had taken since we came to Maine and the lake house, and while I didn't want to be without my other half I also knew I wasn't the only person in the universe that he loved. I couldn't be selfish and hold him down with me, although I wanted to at times.

School was coming up for us here in the States. Early on Patrick and I had decided to try our luck with an actual school instead of continuing our education at home. As both of us had grew up in isolation from others our age, we were curious just what that world of other kids would be like. Parts of anticipation were combined with outright fright inside of me, as I wondered how I'd take to being one among many and especially coming out of the blue as an unsocialized outsider. So in the two weeks while Patrick was away I did everything I could to mentally prepare for high school, even resorting to watching television shows about "typical" student life just so I could figure out what to expect.

Finally Patrick made it back from Japan in the third week of August and the look on his face told me everything about this trip: he returned practically beaming radiance. He walked in through the front door wearing a T-Shirt emblazoned "SURF JAPAN" along with beach shorts and flip-flops, and his skin was tanned about three shades darker than his normal pale color. It was quite a surprise to see him that way.

"What did you do?" I asked just after I embraced him. "You look like you lived at the beach!"

"We practically did," he said breathlessly. "We spent a week in Okinawa, I just love that place. Here!" Grabbing his phone he then showed me images of the trip and I was treated to a stream of photos taken of the beautiful scenery of the Ryukyu islands with white sand, palm trees, and crystal clear water. From the pictures he took It really did look like paradise. There were also lots of photos of his friends in Japan, the other EVA pilots and their classmates (and pet penguins), all looking just like a bunch of kids of vacation having fun in the surf, sand, and the nights afterwards. Needless to say on Patrick's phone there were also lots of images of one pilot in particular…

"Here, look at her!" Patrick called out to me, anxiously swiping on his phone screen to get to the image he wanted. I then saw Rei, standing in front of the beach and wearing an orange-colored bikini. She looked pretty, just tilting her head and giving a slight smile for the camera as her red eyes shined brightly. I also couldn't help but notice that Rei didn't look like she had an ounce of fat on that lithe body of hers.

"She looks cute," I commented and Patrick nodded emphatically. "That was her first ever two-piece," he let me know.

"So, um, did you get your grubby hands on her, then?" I asked Patrick with a smirk.

"Don't put it like that!" He protested. "Hey, I'm not just some horndog, you know!"

"Sure," I nodded, knowing perfectly well that my brother must have had some epic make-out sessions with his blue angel while he was there, given all of his frustration that I had watched him bear over the last couple of months. I kept paging through the rest of the photos until running across another one, this time of Colonel Katsuragi, only this photo was very unexpected: she was also wearing a candy red two-piece swimsuit with sunglasses and a lemonade in her hand, but her belly was very large and rotund. "Wait, is that Colonel…Misato?"

"Yup," Patrick confirmed. "Nearly eight months pregnant, and she's not colonel anymore."

Life really was moving on it seemed and not just for us. In a way it was a relief for me, seeing the other EVA children also learn to change and relax. But I still had big hurdles to climb and I couldn't help but feel I was behind everyone else. "Was that all you did?" I asked Patrick.

"Mari finally got out of the NERV hospital," he told me, "but now off to some therapy place far away. She still can't walk."

"She was lucky to be alive at all," I told him.

"Yeah, we all still hope for the best," he said to me, finally getting more serious. "Just gotta keep positive, that's all."

"Ready for school?"

Patrick's eyes drew a complete blank.

"School," I reminded him. "You know, it starts next week."

It took a few seconds for Patrick's brain to catch up. "Oh, shit," he finally said. "I'm not even ready!"

Good. At least I'm not the last one to get on track.

* * *

Our choice of school was limited by security needs, as our original idea of going to a "plain old" American public high school were dashed nearly immediately both by the Alliance and the others who managed my "house arrest" sentence. It was a peculiar situation, as still-capable EVA pilots we had to have our identities protected wherever we went, while as a convicted felon the other students had to be "protected" from yours truly, as if I were going to hack into the school's mainframe and then steal any Evangelions that might be around. I didn't say that it made sense.

At least my sentencing conditions allowed for school, just as long as it wasn't within fifty miles of NERV First Branch (where Unit 04 had been recently relocated). So with public school out of the question due to the secrecy and resources needed, we were given the choice of any private school that could manage the security and was still reasonably close to the lake house. There was only one: Chamberlain Academy.

Chamberlin was in Berwick, which was a small town on the southern border of the state and about a half-hour drive by car from the lake house. Lake Arrowhead was an hour away, which meant our daily commute would go from the house to Chamberlin, then after school was done we would be taken directly to Lake Arrowhead for our now daily Acro training, and then back home. While I loved the lake house, it also felt good to at least get out and go somewhere else for a change as because of the house arrest situation I had only been to Lake Arrowhead and nowhere else since last April.

The school was advertised as being "college prep" and also as a place that was somewhat exclusive and traditional, enough to require its students to wear uniforms. Immediately thoughts came up of stuck-up rich preppie girls in pleated skirts trying to haze poor newcomers in the bathrooms while they smoked and bragged about their $1,000 Louis Vuitton handbags and ski vacations to Switzerland. Or maybe I shouldn't have watched _Clueless_ or _Heathers_ as part of my pre-attendance research. Heck, I'd settle for _Dead Poets Society_. When I asked Patrick about this, he suggested that perhaps _X-Men_ was the actual film I should research about private schooling. He was no help at all here.

In any case August 28th came and we were on our way, bundled in the back of a large black SUV driven by several burly Alliance security guards (who were an ever-present, if not that noticeable presence around us) on the road headed south. We were both dressed in the school's uniforms, which for me consisted of a blue blazer, blue and red-patterned plaid skirt, and white collared blouse with a bow tie that matched the skirt's pattern. I also wore black loafers and short blue crew socks (which were to my chagrin required). The school also ruled against students wearing makeup, so I could only put on lip gloss and sneak in a little eyeliner, although modest earrings were okay. Patrick wore the boy's version, with blue slacks and a straight tie that matched the plaid pattern. It was probably the most dressed up I'd ever seen him as, and I certainly didn't mind seeing my brother look nice and not spattered with pine needles and mud with his hair messed up like he often was back home. But he was just as nervous and uncomfortable as I was as we sped into the unknown on that cloudy morning.

That first day was a bustle of going from office to office to get us registered and into classes. Maria had come with us to help with the school office, and before too long we were assigned a class schedule and lockers. We also changed our last names to maintain our anonymity, picking "Fletcher" because I thought it would be somehow easy to remember. Then came the bell of the first period and we were off to our homeroom, the first time in my life I had ever actually entered a schoolroom with other kids my age.

I won't go through all of the boring details but suffice to say my first school experience wasn't a disaster, I probably spent most of my time sitting at desks and listening and soaking in the whole experience of being in a class. But hopping from one period to another didn't give me much opportunity to meet anyone. That happened after the fourth period of the day when we got lunch break.

Finding my locker for the first time, I ran the combo and opened it, finding this blank space with grey metal walls. That intrigued me strangely, as I thought at least someone would have put in a note or some sort of instructions. Of course, at NERV that's exactly what they'd do: we were an efficient, military-like organization and as a pilot I was well-taken care of with dozens of staff to support me. But here I was just little old me. In a way I welcomed it, but I knew it was going to take some getting used to this.

Patrick got a locker right next to mine naturally, and he wasted no time spinning the lock and thrusting in his books. From his backpack he promptly dug out photos, banners and a variety of stickers. and within a couple of minutes he had already impressively personalized the locker with pictures of me and of Rei and his other friends in Japan.

Distracted for a moment by my brothers' interior decorating expertise, I didn't notice the person underneath us until I felt them bump into me. I hadn't realized that there were lockers on the bottom row as well as the top, and I found myself nearly knocked over by another student who was rushing to get to his own locker just below mine. As I looked downward I saw a dark-haired boy who looked Asian, with glasses wearing a school uniform crouched below me. Startled, he looked upwards and it was then when I notice where his eyes were suddenly fixed. My hands immediately shot downwards to push my skirt between my legs.

"Yikes!" I screamed. "Would you mind?!"

"S-s-so sorry," he nervously stammered. "I swear I didn't mean to look up like that!"

He tried to get up off the floor but Patrick beat him to it, quickly grabbing him by the collar, lifting him up and pushing him against the row of lockers. "Trying to get a free show, huh?" He told the boy with a narrow, killer glance.

Patrick stood a good six inches taller than this boy, and was certainly a lot more muscular. It didn't take much of his strength to pin the other student to the row of lockers. "I totally swear to God I didn't know she was there!" the boy squelched in fear. "Really!"

"Jason," a voice called out. "Leave the new guys alone, jeez!" Both Patrick and l looked from behind and saw two girl students walk up towards us. One girl was Caucasian with blue eyes and reddish-blonde hair which was worn loosely to the shoulders, and who was about an inch taller than me. The other was of dark completion and looked Indian or South Asian with deep brown eyes and straight black hair that was worn long.

"Sorry," the strawberry blonde-haired girl said to me. "Fan Boy there gets a little excited at times. Is he bothering you?"

Patrick turned to me, still pinning a terrified Jason to the lockers with his left arm. "Is he?" Patrick asked me.

This wasn't the way I wanted to meet friends at my new school. "Just let him go," I instructed Patrick, and he promptly let his grip loose, Jason immediately sliding downwards with a whimper.

The other girl then gave me a smile. "Hi, there. I'm Linda Pulaski. I'm the sophomore class president." She motioned to the group of us standing there. "They told me you're transferring in and I wanted to at least say hello." She offered her hand and I gladly accepted it.

"Hi, I'm Erin," I said to her, happy to at least make one contact here quickly. "And this is Patrick."

"Oh, hi," she said, looking delighted to meet my other half. "Your boyfriend's pretty strong."

I giggled a little. "He's not my boyfriend," I clarified it for her. "We're twins, actually."

"Really? You guys seem pretty close for siblings," Linda commented. I wondered a bit why she said that but then I realized why: when we entered the school this morning Patrick and I held hands. It actually wasn't unusual for us to do that, I mean we spent a lot of time together not to mention we were in pretty close body contact as we trained for Acro. After over four months we were very used to being physically close to each other, but I hadn't realized just how noticeable it was until just now.

The darker girl turned to Linda. "You know what?" she suggested, "let's call them 'Twincest.'" Linda's eyes brightened up. "That's a great idea!"

Oh great, my new classmates have already thought of an unflattering nickname for me. I blushed in embarrassment at the suggestion, and so did Patrick.

"We're just kidding!" Linda helpfully clarified, trying to relieve the situation. "Relax, we're not stuffy like some places. Chamberlin is a pretty good school so you're lucky to be here."

As we talked I kept looking at the shorter, darker girl next to Linda and couldn't hep but wonder who she was, she seemed so familiar. I thought about that girl who nearly moved in next to us when I was six back at Second Branch and wondered….

"Excuse me," I asked the darker girl, "your name's not Nadia, is it?"

"Um, no," she told me. "It's actually Arjuna. Do I look like a Nadia?"

"You kinda do" I told her honestly. I guess having her turn out to be that girl from long ago would have been one coincidence too far for me.

Linda looked downward at the boy below, who kept to himself behind his locker door. "Hey, Jason. Stand up!" Jason promptly popped upwards, this time keeping a safe distance between him and both Patrick and myself.

"Uh, Hi" he awkwardly offered his hand to me, this time bowing his head in his own embarrassment. "I'm Jason Zheng He." This time I took his hand, and politely shook it.

"Nice to meet you, Jason" I sad to him. He didn't say anything in return, but just shook mine until we both released our grip.

"If you need anything computer-wise," Linda told me, "Jason's your guy. That is when he's not going total fan boy over something."

"So can I call you 'Okaku'?" Patrick asked Jason with a smirk. The boy's attitude suddenly shifted into excitement. "You know that word! You know what it _means_?"

"I know a lot more Japanese too," said Patrick. "So long as you're not interested in the color of my sister's panties I'm sure we can get along."

I promptly gave Patrick a good whack on the head for that one. "Ow! What was _that_ for?" I ignored the protest and turned back to the more normal people in the conversation.

"So where are you guys from, anyway?" Linda asked.

"Nevada," I said. "California" Patrick said simultaneously. Both of the girls looked very confused.

"You're not both from the _same_ place?" Arjuna curiously observed.

Realizing that we were in danger of revealing a little too much about ourselves, I quickly tried to steer the reply ahead of Patrick. "We…went to different schools…kinda." I offered.

"But yet you're super close," Linda tried to figure out what we meant and I struggled to figure out how to pull us out of this mess. "It's a really, really long story," I offered.

Patrick then spoke in a loud whisper. "Actually it's a really big secret!"

"What is?"

My brother looked around, trying to see if any other students were listening. Then he told the others. "Don't tell anyone but the truth is…we're both _Evangelion_ pilots!"

I about died right there. We were never supposed to reveal that we were EVA pilots to anyone who didn't need to know it, and that pretty much included anyone at this school, students or staff. Linda looked at us blankly for about five seconds and then suddenly burst into laughter.

"Oh, I like you. You're funny!" said Linda. "Come on, let's get some lunch and I'll show you two around."

Practically frozen in fear of having our true identities be discovered, I turned to Patrick and saw him smile and wink at me. It was then that I could finally let my breath out, realizing that I didn't need to take any of this too seriously. All my fear melted away and I found myself walking among new friends as we made our way down the school hallway. Everything looked like it was going to be alright.

* * *

I spent the next two weeks in a blissful buzz of activity as I got to know the school and everyone in it. Linda and Arjuna were a good pair of guides and within that time I had made dozens of acquaintances, most of whom seemed like they were pretty decent kids with wonderfully normal lives. Patrick also didn't seem to have any trouble making friends, although he seemed less excited than I was about our new school. As far as school itself went I felt challenged more by the whole routine of classes and homework and getting used to the workload, but nothing there seemed out of reach. My prior education at Second Branch was at least at the same level or better than I was getting now, and I didn't feel I was behind my classmates anywhere. So school proved a fun experience, at least so far.

That's not to say there weren't bumps in the road. I selected a computer programming class as one of my six courses and found it was miles behind what I had learned at NERV-2 from my father. Perhaps the teacher was embarrassed when I did offer to teach the class and demonstrated that I knew much more than he did, and by the next day I was re-assigned to a completely different class that had nothing to do with computers.

More importantly, the court-ordered restrictions on my schedule now had a bigger impact. Over the summer Patrick and I had Acro five days a week, but now Patrick needed to go to Cambridge every few days as EVA-04 was being loaned back to the USA for research and he was needed to operate it. Because I wasn't allowed to join him either I needed to return home immediately after school or find something that was qualified as "educational." When I asked Arjuna about any type of "after school-school" that was around, she suggested the local college prep cram program that she took, which seemed to me deathly long and boring. Linda took dance after school however, and I figured that was more my speed and I probably needed to work on toning up my muscles anyway. So I ended up with ballet lessons twice a week on the days Patrick went to First Branch.

The worst of it was that my sentencing conditions also applied to weekends and because there's no school I was restricted to either the lake house or our gymnastics instruction at Lake Arrowhead. I was allowed to go to church, and often did on Sunday mornings along with Maria at a small nearby chapel, but that was all. Over the summer I hadn't worried about it because the lake house was still new to us, but now I really was grounded just when I needed to be working on those new friendships I was making.

It was at the end of two weeks at the school when that invisible tether that I was hooked up to snapped back, and it wasn't a good feeling at all. I was at my locker at the end of fifth period and both Linda and Arjuna came up to us while Patrick and I were getting ready for the day's last class and then our drive back.

"Hey, _Twincest_!" Linda called out to us both. By now we'd gotten used to the cute name and didn't really mind.

"Hey, Linda," I replied, happy to see my new friends again.

"Just wanna let you know, I'm having a big hang-out at my place on Saturday afternoon. Can you make it?"

Both Patrick and I looked at each other, and knew we'd have to decline. He knew I wasn't happy about it either. "Can't do it," he spoke for the both of us. "Got gym this weekend."

"You guys do that every day?"

"Well, we're trying to go into competition, so yeah, actually,"

"Oh, come on?" Linda protested. "You can't make it on the weekends at least? You guys are the busiest people I know."

"Sorry," I told her regretfully, "We're kind of tied up at home."

"Ah, too bad. Everyone's going to be there! Come on? You can't make an exception for at least one weekend, can you?"

I could tell Linda really wanted us there, and I felt back to have to keep turning her down. This was really wanted I wanted for myself too, just to "hang out" with kids my own age and be like them. "I'm sorry," I told her. "I'm also kind of grounded too, so I'm not allowed out on the weekends."

She playfully punched me on the shoulder "It's not like you're in prison or anything! Anyway if you can make it, call me, okay? Bye!" The two of them walked off, waving to other students in the hallway as they went. I just stood there and looked at them go.

"Don't let it get to you," Patrick encouraged.

"I know but, it's kind of what I wanted too," I told him sadly.

Patrick closed his locker door and looked at me with a more serious expression. "What I mean is that don't let this school get to you. We're only here for another six months."

What Patrick meant was that my earlier promise to him was still in effect. Once my one-year sentence was lifted he would be returning to Japan and I would be joining him, and that all of this new school experience would simply be a short-term thing. At first I didn't think it mattered as much, but now finally in grasp of what I had wanted for so long it did and at that moment I hated him for it.

"Easy for you to say," I scowled as I took out my school backpack from the locker. "At least you've got friends." I slammed my locker door and walked away.

That weekend was slow and difficult. Our Acro training had gone well past the basics and we were now into complex jumps and flips for our pairs routine. While I took to it like anything else I did with my customary skill and grace, Patrick now struggled a lot more to catch up. I got dropped a few times on Saturday and that didn't help matters with him. Angry, I took it out on my brother on the ride home and we didn't speak to each other well into Sunday, our one true day off at the lake house. Instead I spent the afternoon just sitting by myself at the boat dock and contemplating how sucky I felt. Dinner didn't go well either and we fought again over Maria's baked pork empanadas.

By Monday I was having second thoughts about our partnership and wondering that if we couldn't make it work on the floor if I needed to ask Miss Keiko to dissolve our team. It's not like Patrick did this for himself anyway, as he seemed too tied into that satellite phone of his to think much of our life together here in the USA and not in faraway Japan. I was so frustrated with the matter that I had forgotten what day today was. The two of us spent the ride to school in silent hostility, perhaps having a serious fight with each other for the first time since we met.

School that day seemed strange too, as everyone I knew including the two girls were "cool" with us. I guess we really were missed at that party at Linda's house and because of it we were socially demoted as well.

For his part Patrick duly noted there was a rift between us and he finally made efforts to close it. Monday afternoon came and without saying goodbye to anyone at school we promptly piled in our security team's black SUV for the hour ride to Lake Arrowhead. Once at the old high school we stripped down into our gym outfits (often worn under our school clothes just to save time changing) and then he was a new man on the spring floor, focused and attentive. After our two and half-hour lesson we were much more in sync with each other, and he didn't drop me once no matter how challenging my dismounts were in leaping from his shoulders. We had a good session, and at the end I warmed up and finally gave my sweaty brother a big hug in reward, which was a great relief to him.

As Maria waited to take us home, Miss Kekio bid us good night, wishing us "Happy Birthday!" at the end. It was then when it hit me like lightning. I was so caught up in my inner turmoil I had forgotten my own birthday.

"Oh my God!" I told Patrick. "Did you know?"

"Of course," he said calmly.

"I've been so busy with everything that…" I said with complete embarrassment," I was supposed to get you something!"

Patrick didn't seemed bothered by it, and in fact was smugly confident. "Well, I got something for you. When we get home."

The ride back was filed with anxiety. It was our first birthday together! But I had completely forgotten everything. What was I going to get him? My mind scrambled with how this would go.

We returned to the lake house and I rushed in the front door, wanting to hurry up to my room to go and look for something, anything that I could make up as a gift. When I opened the door however I was met with yet another surprise, one that literally shouted "Surprise!" at me as I came inside.

"Happy birthday to you," the kids in front of me sang, "Happy birthday to you…" I looked around and there were a dozen students from Chamberlin, including Linda, Arjuna, and Jason in the front, and they were all singing and holding a cake with fifteen candles lit on top.

I turned around to see Patrick coming through the door with the smile of a Cheshire cat on his face. He had planned this all along, I now knew.

"Happy birthday dear…TWINCEST!" Linda shouted in glee as everyone else laughed. "Happy birthday to you!"

"Oh my God, everyone's here!" I cried out happily.

"Oh my God, look at _you_!" said Arjuna. "Is _that_ what you wear after school?" Jason didn't say anything but simply had a glassy-eyed expression as he gawked at me. Of course I hadn't changed back from my gym clothes and here I was standing in front of everyone wearing nothing but a long-sleeved green leotard and plastic slippers. Patrick had on just a tank top and green shorts and Linda went straight to him as he stood by me.

"You guys look awesome! Like real heroes, not just plain ol' kids!" Linda said as she playfully punched Patrick in the arm. From that gesture and the way she looked at my brother I somehow got the impression that she might be more interested in him as something beyond schoolmates.

"Well," I said to everyone, still excited and not even minding being underdressed. "Why…how…did you get here?"

"It's his fault," Arjuna said as she pointed to Patrick. "We tried to set up a party for you on the weekend but he told us you why you're really unable to come out of the house."

"Yeah," said Jason, "I didn't believe it at first, but I hacked the school's computer and confirmed it."

Puzzled, I turned to Patrick. "What did you _tell_ them? I thought we weren't supposed to tell anyone that we're…"

Patrick quickly put a finger to my lips."… in the Witness Protection Program."

"Yeah," confirmed Linda. "So we get it. If you're stuck at home on weekends, then we'll all come out here to see you!"

I looked at Patrick, this time nearly with tears in my eyes. This was his gift, finding a way for me to still make new friends even with all of the restrictions I had. He knew me better than I had realized. I threw my arms around my twin, happy to have someone like him in my life.

"Hey you two," Linda called out, "stop making out and blow out the candles before they set the cake on fire!" The two of us broke it off and went to the cake, each of us quickly making a silent wish before blowing out the fifteen candles in unison. But truthfully I got my wish even before the flames had gone out.

* * *

 _This was a chapter I had wanted to write for some time, sort of a "what if" for both Erin and Patrick on how they try to settle into something of a normal life back in America. It's about as much of "Slice of Life" as I'm going to get with these stories, and serves as a resolution to some of Erin's initial growing-up pains earlier in the story._

 _We are blazing away on the story now, trying to finish as much as I can before the end of the year. And, we got some EVA-action winding up in the next couple of chapters so stay tuned._


	19. Sit It Out Or Dance

Fall progressed into Winter and my life became an almost-normal cycle of school, home and Acro training. Anxieties of school and having friends were smoothed over and bad memories mostly faded away into the distance as I didn't have much time to think  
/about them at all, such was my now-packed schedule. That nearly a year ago I was lying in a hospital bed, coming out of a months-long coma seemed like a dream, a dream I'd nearly forgotten.

The only current reminder of the past was the two days a week when my brother would leave Chamberlin after classes to be shuttled back to Cambridge where Unit 04 was parked. He didn't talk much about what they did there, except to say that it was boring  
/and required little more than for him to be present inside the EVA while the unit was tested and studied. It seemed pointless to me, the Angels were gone, SEELE was defeated, so why keep the EVA around still? I was about to find out.

At the end of Fall Quarter there was Winter, and then Winter Formal. Winter Formal was the major social event of the school season and I didn't want to miss it. Unfortunately that tether of the legal system again snapped me back, as what they defined  
/as "education" didn't include after-school dances. I had already missed Homecoming two months earlier for the same reason and not wanting to be left out of this one, wrote to the judge to ask if they could make an exception for me this once. Judge  
/Jackson wrote me back, asking if I had been keeping myself busy and out of trouble, and I responded by telling her everything I was doing, adding that I hadn't stolen any Evangelions during the rest of this year and wasn't planning to. I guess that  
/was convincing, because with a couple of days to go to the big night I got my court clearance, provided that Cinderella-style I was back home by midnight.

We worked fast to get me ready, Maria bought me a wonderful sequined emerald-green strapless dress and polished black-high heeled sandals to go with it, plus a nice wrap and faux fur coat given that nights in Southern Maine had now dropped below freezing.  
/My hair was done up right after our last acro session of the season, as Keiko was going back to Japan to visit family. Given that I had it cut super-short back in March, I hadn't needed to mess with my hair much and even now I had only gotten it down  
/to my collar. But at least it had good body and the hairdresser did a great job of fluffing that out, accented with a nice decorative band that matched my outfit.

So I spent that Saturday getting everything ready for me to go out. Patrick decided not to try and match with my outfit, opting for what he called a "cowboy suit" of tan jacket and slacks, boots, and bolo tie. He did finally cut his hair however, and  
/he looked downright dapper once he gelled it up. Dressed before me, Patrick watched just outside the doorway as I did the final touches in my bathroom mirror.

"What do you think?" I asked him just after I put on full makeup and gave him a look at me.

"Pretty good," he complemented. "You know," he observed, "I think this is the first time I've ever seen you actually wear pantyhose."

It was true. Generally I hated wearing any kind of hose, a result of experimenting back in my Princess of Second Branch days and finding stockings were itchy and sweaty in the dry heat of the Nevada climate. Besides, I had a pretty good pair of legs and  
/didn't want to hide them. But once the weather here in Maine dropped below forty degrees bare legs paired with a school skirt was not going to work and after suffering in the cold Arjuna gifted me a pair of black cotton tights. I liked them enough  
/that within a week I had another three pairs, and decided that Formal was a chance to try something new. So with the dress I wore a pair of black hose, simple but elegant, although they still took some getting used to wearing.

"Yup," I replied. "I guess I'm a bit grown up now."

"You really are a princess," Patrick told me. I walked up to him, wanting to at least share a moment before we headed out.

"Really, do I look okay?"

"You do," he said simply. I rewarded him with a quick kiss on the lips. "Thank you."

"Thank you, at least for getting me out of trouble." What he meant was that we had agreed to be each other's "escort" to the dance, not using the word date for obvious reasons, and this was largely to save Patrick from Linda, who in the last couple of  
/months had taken an increasingly aggressive approach to Patrick after finding out his girlfriend was eight thousand miles away. There was something else, as since we started school Patrick had always encouraged me to at least consider dating but I  
/still wasn't quite ready. One reason was that I didn't see the point to it if I couldn't even leave the house, but besides that there was something I was still working out for myself even now.

As Patrick got his jacket and winter coat I walked down the hallway and found the other bedroom, the one where we always kept the door closed. I had avoided going into Vance's bedroom all year, having only come in here the day we moved in, but now I just  
/needed to see it again.

I turned on the room light and looked around. The small bedroom was highly decorated, with all of the tastes of the occupant becoming quite apparent as Vance loved hunting in the woods, loved boating on the water, and loved looking at hot girls. There  
/were plenty of posters all around the bedroom walls representing all three inclinations. To an outsider, Vance would have seemed just like any hot-blooded American country-raised teenaged male.

Sitting on the bed, I looked around the room and tried to remember everything about him, when I first saw him at Second Branch, and all of the fun times we had both here and back at NERV-2. I could remember his tall stature and dark eyes. I could still  
/remember his strong arms around me and how warm and fuzzy that felt. Nothing had ever felt like that to me before, and nothing had quite since.

Inside of him I knew Vance was conflicted, and that all of this stuff on the outside about him being tough and rugged was a show. He wanted to be loved too, he wanted me there, but also he knew he wasn't ordinary. A boy who was a natural born killer,  
/who maybe was afraid that no one ever could love him.

Well I did. And now he was gone. I couldn't let myself think about why anymore, it would just open up doors that I wanted to keep closed and behind me. But I couldn't still help wanting him here. He should have been my date tonight, he should be the one  
/that I'll dance with, and then sneak a kiss out in the back of the gymnasium with while no one's watching. It should have been him.

I looked around the room and noticed something I hadn't yet seen before: at the very edge of his dresser just next to the bed was a small ceramic tiger, maybe two inches high. "Tiger" was always his nickname for me, and I couldn't help but think it was  
/me he thought of when he went to sleep in that bed at night. Without thinking I took it and held the tiny tiger in my hands, caressing it as my thoughts shifted between past and future. Hearing Patrick's footsteps outside the hallway, I knew it was  
/time to go, so I clutched the tiger in my hand and then got up off the bed, turning out the light and then shutting the door behind me as I walked out. I never came back to the room again.

* * *

The dance was held in the gymnasium, and as we entered we noticed that the entire interior had been decorated with banners and balloons in the school's colors of red, blue and white. It did look like something you'd expect to see in a teenager movie from  
/the 1980s, and even '80s music from old groups like _A-Ha_ and _OMD_ were playing on giant speakers. The whole interior was crammed to the gills with kids, as it seemed nearlyall of our classmates had come that night.

The gymnasium floor had been converted to a dance floor with hundreds of kids twisting and spinning around on it, and there was another stage that had been pulled out of the wall which made for an upper level and a second dance floor. A DJ spun up records  
/on that podium and various students made announcements or passed along messages over the loudspeakers. To one side there were drinks and food and a group of students huddled around there that weren't dancing.

Having never been to a dance before I wasn't entirely sure what to do, except to expect to get asked to dance by boys. To me it was my first real steps out into that world so, I thought, here goes and I walked right in.

I made it as far as the drink table, as Arjuna flagged us down. She was wearing a violet floral-patterned long-sleeved dress and black heels and hose, and looked quite pretty. She was overjoyed to see me, reaching up and embracing both of us as we came  
/over to her.

"You made it!" she shouted over the music. "I thought they wouldn't let you come!"

"Well we got lucky this time," I replied. I couldn't help but feel hot in the crowded auditorium and took off my coat and wrap, fully revealing my new dress to Arjuna.

"Amazing! You look so beautiful!"

"Thanks! So do you. Did anyone ask you yet?"

"Not yet, actually I was waiting for Linda to get here." She looked around as Patrick took off his own coat and his jacket and hung it on a nearby chair, and then loosened up his collar. I knew he didn't want to be here if and when Linda came up, and  
/he looked at me and angled his head towards the dance floor.

"Um, I think we'll go on the floor first…"

Before we could finish the sentence Linda popped right into our little group. Wearing a silver-tinted strapless dress with a short hemline and a giant bow on the front, she looked ready to pounce. "Hi Everyone!" Linda shouted. "Erin, Patrick, so nice  
/to see you here tonight! They let you out of jail, huh?"

"You could say that," Patrick responded, clearly nervous.

"Come on, then. Let's go!" Without even waiting to be asked, Linda grabbed Patrick's wrist and dragged him towards the dance floor. He gave me worried looks back but I just shrugged. What could I do now, anyway?

Both Arjuna and I watched as Linda dragged Patrick all the way to the higher level in her attempt to coerce him over. As she watched them, Arjuna told me "she keeps trying. Sometimes it's the one's that look impossible that seem the most attractive."  
/I just nodded, as both of us knew of Linda's recent crush on Patrick. Heck, practically the whole school did.

"Although," Arjuna continued, "I couldn't say I blame her." She turned to me. "Your bro is pretty cute. Must be some girl he's got over there far away to get him to be so loyal."

"You know,' I said to her, "If you'd ever met her, you'd know why he's like that. She's truly one of a kind."

"Well," she told me. 'I'll settle for any kind at the moment." Arjuna motioned to the food table.

"All this makes me hungry, do you want to go get anything?"

I declined it, not wanting to spend this night just eating. "Not right now. You go on ahead." She did so, leaving me standing there alone.

What should I do now, I wondered. Should I just stand here until someone asks me? Or maybe go out on the floor and find someone to dance with? The world of adolescent culture still seemed alien to me even after three months at the school. For a brief  
/moment I thought back to what I had done before I came here, I had brought a small purse and quickly felt inside for the little tiger. I just needed to touch it, maybe for strength or for luck. Just after I did so I could have sworn I heard a whisper  
/in my ear, someone said to me "look behind you." Startled, I swiveled around.

Standing in front of me was Jason. He was surprisingly well-groomed, with his black hair now neatly combed and wearing a dark grey suit with bright red tie. Even his glasses were now gone. But he looked as nervous as I felt.

"Hi," he said. "You made it!"

"Yeah," I replied, blushing. "Your glasses! What happened to them?"

"Oh I wear contacts sometimes," he explained. "It's just really hard getting used to wearing them."

Both of us struggled on what to say next, but it was pretty clear what was on both of our minds.

"Do you want to…"

"Wanna dance?" I blurted out simultaneously.

He nodded and then both of us made for the large dance floor, quickly finding an opening and then moving to the music of 80s group _Duran Duran_ once we found a space. Now this was fun, here I was surrounded by dozens of kids, moving with the music  
/and leaving my cares behind. I could do this all night!

We went through a few songs and then the tempo changed to a slower beat as the lights went down lower. Oh, I thought, they do those kind of songs here too. I looked at Jason who seemed like he was having as much fun as I was, and who at least tonight  
/didn't seem nearly as geeky as his school reputation put him out to be. But did he want to slow-dance too? We looked at each other for a moment and he didn't run for the outside, so I figured the coast was clear. I stepped up to him, shook my head  
/a little, and then slowly put one of my hands behind his back, while my other hand found his.

The music was now "Careless Whisper" by _Wham!_ And we slow-danced those few minutes together without saying much of anything. It felt good to be next to him however. I liked Jason, as a friend. He was pretty smart and true to his reputation probably  
/the school's top computer wiz besides myself. He also got along well with Patrick and we'd spend a lot of great lunches all eating together and chatting at school. But I liked this feeling too: this felt kind of cozy for me, and I think it did for  
/him as well.

Another slow song came on, this time it was "Lady in Red" by some Irish guy whose name I couldn't remember. We kept the slow dance going, and the music was low enough to allow us to talk above it without shouting.

"Didn't think you make it tonight," he told me. "How did you do it?"

"I was really nice to someone and they let me go," I explained without further detail. We danced a bit more, just swinging to the music and getting just a bit closer to each other. He then spoke again.

"I just wanted to ask you something? Is that okay?"

"Yeah, sure," I told him. We held each other closer, my head now resting on his shoulders.

"You came from Nevada, right?" he asked. I nodded my head, wondering what this was about.

"I think I know where you're really from," he said. "You and your brother."

I tried to play innocent, hoping that he hadn't found our secret out. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Jason explained. "You're from Nevada, and your brother is close by. But he also went to Japan too, and was there long enough to have friends and all."

"Yeah, so?"

"And both of you are sort of really talented and then on top of that you have all of this security. Those guys in the black SUV that pick you up and drop you off."

I was really beginning to worry about this and lifted my head up. "You noticed that?"

"Hard not to, who else comes here to Chamberlin with bodyguards? Oh, there's a couple of rich kids who do but you're not like them at all."

"And…"

"And you're in witness protection and all. So I figured you got to be important somehow," he deduced. Then he threw out the kicker. "You're one of _them_ , aren't you?"

I didn't stop dancing, but I knew that my cover was blown. Strangely I didn't care.

"What do you mean, _them_?"

"One of The Children. You know, like First, Second, Third, and all that."

I giggled a little, if nervously., "That's a really crazy story."

"Only thing that makes sense, really. I thought your brother was joking that first day but after I kept talking to him I realized it's not a joke, is it?"

My armor dropped a bit now, as it seemed like it was just the two of us on this dance floor, "Okay, so what?"

"Then you were there! You were there when the Angels and stuff, all that happened!" said Jason.

Sighing, I put my head back on his shoulder. "I wasn't really there for most of it," I told him.

"But you were in Nevada, at NERV-2," he said. "Were you there when it went…"

It felt like a tidal wave hit me just then. I had done everything I could do to shut out the memories of where I had come from. I had kept myself busy, mind and body, moved far away and went to a new school, even switched names in the hopes of leaving  
/that all behind. But suddenly here I was reminded of the horror of losing my home.

I broke off from Jason, and had to really fight to keep my composure. "I…I…" I stammered, wretched by emotions suddenly coming up to the surface that I had pushed down for so long. "I wasn't there when it happened!" I told him.

Jason didn't realize what he had opened up by trying to prove what he knew. "I'm...I'm sorry I brought that up," he told me as the music started to pick up temp again. "I guess I didn't realize how bad that might be for you."

"You really have no idea," I chided him, now upset that he had brought all of this past up just when I was forgetting everything. I looked for Patrick, as I needed to retreat and he was my base. Arjuna came running towards me, holding Patrick's jacket.

"Have you seen Patrick?" I shouted over the music.

"I'm looking for him, too," she told me. "His phone's in his jacket and it keeps buzzing and won't stop." I reached inside of the inside jacket pocket where Patrick kept his phone and found it, then pulled up the screen. On the front it read

CODE 01 ALERT: CONTACT ASAP

CODE 01 ALERT: CONTACT ASAP

CODE 01 ALERT: CONTACT ASAP

CODE 01 ALERT: CONTACT ASAP

CODE 01 ALERT…

Oh, shit. Something big had happened. "We've got to find him!" I told Arjuna as Jason stood there with us. Then there was a voice over the speakers, as one of the students spoke into the message microphone.

"All right, all right," the male student called out, "Who brought the helicopter?" Laughter came out of the audience of students in response. We looked towards the stage and saw the student get pushed aside by someone else, someone adult who wore an olive-green  
/pilot's uniform, helmet, and leather jacket.

"Excuse me, Excuse me everyone!" the pilot called out and the music in the auditorium suddenly stopped. The din of student conversation dropped down to silence and everyone turned to face the military pilot.

"I'm looking for a Patrick Forrestal. Is there a Patrick Forrestal here?"

Both Jason and Arjuna looked at me with shocked expressions. "He doesn't mean _our_ Patrick does he?" Arjuna asked.

Duty calls. With both of the others in tow I pushed my way through the crowd of students, searching everywhere for Patrick on the dance floor. It didn't take me long to find him, he was on the upper stage, and Linda was right next to him. She looked like  
/she had been crying.

Once I spotted him I hurried to the edge of the stage. Patrick spotted me coming his way and rushed over to see me. Angry, I took his jacket from Arjuna's hands and then threw it at him. "You idiot!" I told him. "You didn't check your phone for messages!"

Patrick was resigned over the matter. "Hell of a time to do this," he told me. My brother then looked over at where the pilot was standing, perhaps thirty feet away, but instead of rushing over to him he instead jumped off the stage onto the lower level  
/about four feet below. However he didn't land on his feet, and instead tumbled to the floor, grabbing his knee in pain.

I rushed over to where he was and crouched down. His face grimaced in pain as he clutched his knee and held it close to him. "Ow, ow, ow," he groaned.

"What happened?" I asked him as the other students gathered around.

"I think…I think I broke it!" he said with a strained voice.

All I could think of even then was that our Acro team was now history if he was out with a broken knee or leg. "Stupid!" I scolded him. "You shouldn't have jumped down like that!"

Patrick then looked up at me, and this time he had a serious tone in his voice. In the months that I had gotten to know him, I knew when he was joking around and when he really meant it, and this time he really meant it. He said to me, in a soft voice  
/"I guess you'll just have to go in my place."

I stood back up, knowing what it meant. "But," I replied, "but I'm not allowed to. I'm not…"

He looked back at me, his eyes focused right at me, and he said in that soft yet serious voice, "Go get 'em tiger," He then winked, and smiled just slightly.

I had always thought piloting EVA was behind me, but now here was a situation where it had again become possible, if not exactly legal. Whether Patrick was faking all of this or not I didn't know, but he was handing me an opportunity I'd never thought  
/I'd get again. It was my choice.

Looking for the helicopter pilot, I waived my hand. "Here! He's here!" I shouted. Within a few second the pilot and another solider came down and saw Patrick huddled in agony down on the lower dance floor.

"He's, um, broken something," I told the pilot. He and the other soldier crouched over and tried to move Patrick to see if he was okay, but my brother just howled in pain. The pilot sighed in exasperation.

"Get a medevac to get him out of here," he told the soldier. I then stood in front of the pilot. "You need him, right?" I asked.

"Yes, we do."

"Well," I told him, "I'm _Erin_ Forrestal, and I can do anything he can do." I didn't mention EVA, I didn't think I needed to.

The pilot considered what was happening. "Anything?" he asked me.

"Yes," I replied, nodding confidently.

"Miss, I got orders to bring him back, but if you can do what he can do then maybe you could help." The pilot motioned to the other soldier. "Get him back to base so they can take him to sickbay and fix that leg," he ordered. Then he turned to me and  
/instructed "Miss, you come with me."

Just before leaving with the pilot I turned to face the other students. Standing in front was Arjuna, whose dark skin now seemed nearly sheet-white. Her eyes looked at me in disbelief.

"I told you they were really pilots," Jason said to her.

Patrick was still crouched down on the gymnasium floor, now being tended to by both the soldier and by Linda who had decided Patrick needed her special kind of care in his moment of duress. I looked at him one last time and he just smiled at me for a  
/moment, then went back to groaning loudly.

Turning back to Arjuna and Jason, I said to both of them "Hey, wish me luck!" Jason offered a thumbs-up, while Arjuna, panicked by what she now realized was the truth, put her hands to her mouth in fear. With no time left to lose I turned around and hurried  
/as I followed the pilot out of the gym and towards the playing field where he had parked his helicopter.

* * *

The flight to First Branch was short, around twenty minutes, and it was freezing cold in the cabin as I had left my coat and wrap behind. On the way I told myself that I must be crazy for doing this. Even so, I figured that I wasn't going to sit this  
/dance out either.

My sentence had stipulated that I couldn't get within fifty miles of any EVA unit, and that tracker chip underneath my skin was how they enforced that. Would they know I was coming? Obviously, and that had to be my first hurdle to jump.

When we finally landed on a helipad high up on one of the larger buildings at First Branch, the cabin door of the helicopter was opened. Facing me were four green-patterned camouflaged soldiers, each with their assault rifles pointed right at me. So much  
/for a warm welcome.

The pilot was confused about my reception and nearly immediately got into an argument with an officer that was standing next to the soldiers. Then out of a doorway that faced the landing pad came another figure, a petite young woman wearing a grey suit  
/with heels.

"Erin!" Olivia Perry called to me as she rushed towards the helicopter. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Patrick hurt himself," I explained briefly.

"Figures. The one time we call an alert in the last three months and he doesn't show up." She then faced the soldiers that had me under guard. "Well, what the hell are you doing? Let her get off the damn chopper!"

"She can't come!" the officer argued. "I have a restriction on her, she's not allowed on base!"

"Look," Olivia argued, "didn't you hear what she said? She's the only available pilot. Unless you want to try the dummy plug with the unit she's all we got."

"That's not your call," said the officer.

"Hey, we're fucking NERV here, and we got more important things to do then let some lawyers jack us around." Olivia reached in and pulled me by the arm out of the helicopter. "If you got a problem, go upstairs with it but we can't wait any longer." Not  
/quite knowing what else the do, the soldiers let us by while the officer got on his phone. We left them on the landing pad as Olivia walked me into an elevator. We both entered the car and she used a key to bypass the control panel, the elevator doors  
/closing and we swiftly moved downward.

"So," Olivia asked me again. "What happened to your charming brother."

"He, uh, he broke his leg," I said nervously. "I think."

I could tell that Olivia wasn't buying it. "Rather convenient timing, that," she replied with a smirk. "Looks like he got you here after all." The elevator stopped and we got out and both of us walked down what looked like one of the engineering passages  
/at either one of the NERV bases I had been to before, as Olivia led me down a couple of corridors to get to our first stop.

"What's gong on?" I asked her. "Did another angel show up?"

"Angel? No, not an angel." We arrived at one room and walked inside. It was a storage area of some kind and Olivia looked through several bins to find what she needed. She pulled out one storage crate and opened it. Inside was exactly one large orange-colored  
/duffle bag with black stripes and the number "04" emblazoned on it.

"Is that yours?" she asked me.

I pulled the plug suit carrier out of the storage crate and then opened up the zipper, checking the suit to be sure that it my own and not one of Patrick's. I had worn one of his before and that wasn't at all comfortable on me. "Yes, it's mine."

"Then let's get you suited up. We've got a ways to fly to the target and I'll brief you on the way."

* * *

For the first time in nine months I suited up and then entered the entry plug of Evangelion Unit 04. It felt good to be back. Just like so many times before, I rested on the control throne while the plug was flooded with LCL and we ran though the initiation  
/sequence, with nothing out of the ordinary. It was a little hard breathing in the LCL again however after such a long time out of action and after a scary moment or two I had settled back into routine. My sync rate was lower than usual, this time  
/it was 23%, but I figured it had been a while and told myself not to worry about it. Once we were fully active Unit 04 was lifted out of the EVA cages by cranes and then loaded onto a giant cargo aircraft. As they were loading I got a good view of  
/First Branch's facilities while we were being moved from the EVA cage to the airfield and they were impressive if not as gigantic inside as Tokyo-3's GeoFront.

Our target was a location in the American southwest, and it would take four hours to fly there. During the flight Olivia, who was seated with a controller crew in the same transport that was carrying us, gave me the full mission briefing via video channel  
/on the plug's display monitor.

"Did anyone tell you that there were survivors from SEELE's central committee?" Olivia asked me.

"Nope."

"Yeah, well, one dickhead escaped Norway and somehow got a hold of a spare Mass Production Evangelion."

"That's not good."

"Not at all. They spotted this thing in the Mojave desert a few hours ago. Where he managed to recover it we haven't determined, but now that we know it's there we need to find it and kill it. Alliance recon has tracked the enemy EVA moving towards the  
/abandoned city of Las Vegas. You know where that is?"

I did know. It was close to home, or what had once been home. "I've been there, actually,"

"Really? But no one's been allowed there for years."

"My father took me there once when I was younger. There's a bunch of giant old hotels and stuff, looks like a bunch of ancient monuments now."

"There's also a bunch of underground infrastructure below the main hotels," Olivia added. "Not to mention a giant airport right next door. It's large and solid and deep enough that you could make an operations base out of it if you were so inclined. We  
/think maybe this has become some sort of secret hideout for these leftover SEELE guys."

"So what do I have to do?"

"It's simple: find that harpy and destroy it. We'll do the rest. There is a backup EVA unit coming from Japan, but you'll arrive on target first as we need to get a jump on this thing before it gets away. So when we get there, land and engage and hopefully  
/we won't need the backup. "

I nodded to Olivia. "Got it."

"Then get lots of rest on the ride over there, kiddo. You'll likely need it." She closed the video channel and I settled into the throne for the rest of the flight. I was happy to be piloting EVA again but I was also worried: this time I really was alone,  
/no copiloting with Patrick, and no one else but me up against this thing. I wondered if I was really ready at all.

* * *

 _As promised, we've got some more EVA action coming and we're building up to a climax, hopefully about two more chapters to go until this is finished so hang on._


	20. Coming Home

It was still dawn in Nevada when we finally arrived, the skies were covered in a cloudy overcast as the giant transport aircraft carrying me and Unit 04 descended towards our drop point. Just before landing Olivia again gave me a rundown of what I'd be doing once I hit the ground.

"You'll be disembarked at the old airport," she said. "I want you to patrol the row of hotels down the main boulevard of the city and try to find our bad guy. Once he shows up, neutralize him with your Pallet Gun and then finish him off with the Lance of Longinus that we've equipped you with." The Pallet Gun I was very familiar with, as we trained with them often back at NERV-2. But the Lance was new to me: the weapon that NERV used against other EVAs, one that was capable of breaking completely through an AT Field. I had seen one used before, when "evil boy" Kaworu in Unit 06 had used one to disable Unit 01 on that horrible day in the GeoFront. One of those Lances was now strapped onto Unit 04's back as we flew towards the target area.

"Remember that you can't fully defeat the Harpy until you use the Lance, and you have to penetrate all the way to the core of the unit," Olivia reminded me. "Do your best to try and knock it out first, and then kill it quickly before it can regenerate. If you need backup," she also informed me, "the Japanese unit is coming, but still over an hour away."

"Shouldn't we wait until they get here?" I asked Olivia, not wanting to go into combat unless we had a definite advantage, as I'd rather go two-on-one than one-on-one with any enemy.

"The concern is that this Mass Production unit might try and fly away first, and then we lose our chance to get them. If you can engage him within its hiding place there in Vegas it will save everyone a lot of trouble."

"Worse case," Olivia added, "if he's too much trouble for you back off and we can drop an N2 on him and that ought to slow him down a bit. But let's try to corral him for now on our own while we've got surprise on our side" I was hoping Olivia was right about that, as I was beginning to feel less and less confident about what we were doing.

Our aircraft finally arrived over the abandoned city of Las Vegas, flying us low and slow over the ground so that the EVA could be launched without needed a parachute to land. We dropped about a thousand feet off the ground and then landed on our feet on one of the large runways of the old airport next to the city. Once safely down I quickly bounded the EVA to the nearest cover I could get to, a large golden-colored hotel tower across the major boulevard just a few hundred yards in front of us.

I quickly checked my weapons before doing anything else. The Pallet gun was status-ready, cradled in the EVA's hands with the safety off. I also had two Prog Knives in either shoulder pylon in case I needed them for close-in fights, Then there was the Lance of Longinus itself, which was firmly attached to a strap on Unit 04's backside. It was important to use the Lance at the right time, so if I encountered the Harpy I'd need to work on damaging it enough with the Pallet Gun and whatever else I had to keep it from fighting back or escaping before I could finish it off with the Lance. This wasn't going to be easy, but I hoped that all of that earlier training would click in when I needed it.

I hid behind the golden hotel tower and peered towards the rest of the city. Las Vegas, when it was still a bustling, thriving metropolis, consisted of a million people serving another million guests and most of those guests lived in a four-mile-long string of hotels that went down a single boulevard named, appropriately enough, "Las Vegas Boulevard." Several of the hotel buildings were gigantic, dwarfing even the Evangelion, and in their heyday had held tens of thousands of people inside at once. Now the city was empty of people and these abandoned hotels, many of them with fancy appearances designed to make them look like make believe places or far away destinations, stood silently collecting dust and providing homes to the local wildlife.

Our task was to try and find this one Mass Production unit and The Strip, as the large boulevard was nicknamed, was thought to be the best place to hide a one hundred and twenty-foot-tall monster. I couldn't agree more, as it was easy to see how a Harpy could find a hiding place among a dozen or so giant hotels in sight. To me this was all playing out like one gigantic game of Hide and Go Seek. Well, I said to myself under my breath, "Come out, come out, wherever you are."

With my Pallet Gun at the ready I slowly made my way down the boulevard, moving from South to North. Next to the golden hotel was one that looked like Egyptian ruins, with a giant sphynx in front and a black pyramid made of glass behind it, although much of the glass was now broken up. I slowly moved towards the sphynx, carefully checking my scanners to see if anything was around me. But there was no movement. I kept moving up the street.

I reached an intersection surrounded by more giant hotels. To my left was one that looked like a medieval castle, while to my right there was a gigantic green hotel with a lion posed in front. Further to my left was a hotel that had a scale-model of old New York city on the front, with the remains of what looked like a roller-coaster wrapped around it. People rode roller coasters around these things? What the heck kind of a place was this? I decided to moved towards the New York hotel, keeping my Pallet Gun at the ready as I searched around the buildings.

"See anything, Unit 04?" came Olivia's voice over the audio.

"Negative, control," I replied back.

"Keep moving down the street. That thing's hiding somewhere."

There wasn't anything at the New York place so I turned my attention to the green hotel and again searched through it, peeking around buildings looking for anything that might have been hiding. Again there was nothing, and after a couple of minutes I swung around and looked at the other hotels. There was a white tower facing the one with the lion with the name 'Tropicana' still visible on it's front, and next I checked that building. No movement, and nothing on sensors. It was when I turned towards the castle that I felt something around that was moving. Maybe it was just too quiet, but then…

"Erin!" Olivia shouted, "Behind you!"

I quickly pivoted around to face a massive white monster with two arms, no eyes and massive teeth. It was as if he had come out of thin air. Had he been hiding in one of the hotels and I missed him? Instinctively I brought up my Pallet gun to fire but he swung down on it with a Lance of his own and cut the gun into pieces, then he brought it up again for another thrust. Panicked, I flipped myself backwards and bounded towards the New York hotel, trying to get up and over it so I could take cover.

The Harpy didn't quit at that, and came down on the hotel itself with its lance, which had now changed shaped into a two-edged sword. He didn't mark me however and I darted around the backside of the hotels, lined up with a large elevated highway. As the Harpy searched for where I was hidden, I tried sneaking around to a new spot, searching around concrete rubble and ruins for somewhere that I could stay out of sight and regroup.

I found another big hotel to hide behind about a half-mile north and tried to keep the Harpy in sight while I got back to my controller. "Olivia?" I called out.

"Erin, are you alright?"

"So far, but he got my gun."

"We'll drop a replacement. It will be within three thousand meters north-east of your position."

"Okay,"

Using a digital map display I saw where I was relative to where they'd be dropping the rifle. I'd have to go past another large hotel, one that was built to look like a giant Greek temple, and then cross the boulevard again and I'd probably be spotted by You Know Who. Above me an aircraft soared, and then I saw a white parachute drop out of it.

"Erin, they did the drop," Olvia called out. "We'll distract him while you go over there and pick up the Pallet Gun. We've only got the one spare, so don't lose this one!" she warned.

"Roger," I replied. My heart raced as I waited for the next move, still not feeling myself confident or safe in the current situation. One wrong turn and that guy would…

I felt the EVA shake as something tugged at our right side. Turning around I saw the Harpy with his sword high in the air. He had again found us! Without thinking I gave him a side kick that pushed him back into a building, and then darted out from behind the hotel I was hiding and towards the other side of the boulevard.

The Harpy tried to follow me but then ran into a barrage of explosions, as military aircraft that had accompanied us on the sorte to Nevada were now making attacks on the unit. None of the bombs dropped by those bombers would actually do anything harmful to it, of course, but they still made great distractions against the enemy EVA as it turned to face aircraft flying at close range. I continued my evasion across the street and went looking for the weapon that was dropped, finding the Pallet gun in it's drop casing resting on top of a giant parking garage.

Quickly I grabbed the gun and then scrambled further north, past another row of hotels and then finally getting a hiding place behind one named "Desert Inn" that had the remains of a giant golf course behind it. I looked around the corner of the hotel tower and saw the Harpy, still trying to both knock out the fast-moving aircraft with its arms like it was King Kong while searching for where I was hiding,

If the battle was going on like this, I figured, a direct one-on-one match wasn't the way to win this fight. I thought about calling in the N2 strike like Olivia offered to slow the Harpy down, but for some reason was reluctant to do so. I wasn't sure why, it wasn't like there were people living here anymore in Las Vegas or anything. But I still didn't want to blow up the city if I could help it. Instead I kept looking at the Mass Production unit as it slowly moved closer towards us, wondering if I could come up with any kind of advantage.

Through the video display I studied the Harpy as it approached, nothing something about it that I hadn't seen before. "Olivia?" I asked the controller. "What's that thing sticking out of it's back?"

"What thing?"

"There's this, like, cross-shaped antenna, that's mounted in the spine just behind the shoulders." I had seen Harpies during my time at SEELE, and none of them had that extra addition on them. What was that thing?

There was a short silence from Olivia and then she had an answer. "Not sure but we're picking up signal exchanges coming from it. It might be a communications antenna."

"But it's a dummy plug inside, right? I mean who's controlling it?"

"Could be some way that it's remote controlled, maybe a way to override the dummy plug's berserker tendencies" Olivia said. "it's definitely digital whatever it is."

Digital, I thought. Maybe there was a weakness with this guy after all.

"Erin," called out Olivia. "I don't like this. Pull out and back towards the east while I call for the N2. Then you and the Japanese unit can have another go at him when they get here."

"But you said he might get away!"

"I'm willing to take that risk instead of losing you to it. If he's got a Lance of his own he could _kill_ you."

I saw in the distance that the Harpy was getting closer to my hiding place behind the hotel complex, it would only be a matter of time before he found us. I knew I had do something, and while I was all for running away at that moment the thought of this monster getting away and being able to later on attack a real city with actual people in it was also scary. I had to stop this beast now if I could.

I took my hands off the actuators and then concentrated via my A10s for the entry plug to show me the virtual keyboard. In a second a full QUERTY keyboard was holographically projected with arms reach of the control throne.

That I had activated the keyboard also alerted the EVA controllers. "Erin," Olivia said over the speakers, "What are you doing?"

My fingers hit the keyboard in lightning speed as I worked out a plan. "I'm gonna mess him up a bit," I told her.

Dad had designed Unit 04 around me, and part of that was giving her a capability to fight on an electronic battlefield, not just a physical one. Inside of Unit 04 was a set of memory banks that contained several different types of crack programs. Some were designed to defend against digital attacks by opponents, while others were offensive programs designed to disable or damage anything that was electronic in nature. Unit 04 was special in that way.

As I hid behind the Desert Inn, I worked out a very sloppy but quick program that would use my EVA's own antenna to try and interfere with whatever digital signal was controlling that Harpy, first by breaking into the transmission with my own, and then by using a DDOS, or denial of service attack on it. A DDOS would flood millions of garbage signals into the input of the controller and completely mess up its signal reception, cutting it off from whoever was controlling it.

"Erin," Olivia warned on the audio, "get out of there! He's spotted you!"

"Almost there," I told her. It had taken a few more seconds to try and string this together, harder now as it had been a long while since doing anything like this with the EVA.

"Erin, now!"

I looked up on the display and saw the Harpy perhaps less than an hundred yards away from me. Oh shit, time to go! It again took another swing with the double-edged sword and neatly sliced off the top four floors of the hotel I was hiding behind. I backpedaled, bringing up my Pallet Gun and extending my AT Field in front of me to match the Harpy's own field. As I ran backwards and further north I blasted a few bursts from the gun while trying to find one more thing large enough to get in the way of this beast and give me time to finish the program I was coding.

As the Harpy chased me across the desert cityscape, I concentrated for a second on the EVA. I had to finish this code. it would fix everything if I could do it, but I couldn't fight and type at the same time. _Come on, mom, help me to do this,_ I thought.

Suddenly a thought came to my head. Either a thought or a message, but it said something like this:

 _"_ _I'll defend you. Just finish what you need to do."_

Without questioning it I took my hands off the actuators and focused on the keyboard. But the EVA's gun kept firing and it kept moving further towards the city. I wasn't commanding the EVA now, she was doing this completely on her own! I couldn't take time to figure out what was happening, only that I knew that it was the break I needed, and within a few more seconds I typed the last commands and hit "RETURN." The Harpy was nearly on top of us when the signal was blasted out.

As I scrambled to get my hands back on the actuators and get back control I saw the Harpy on the display. It had suddenly stopped attacking us and then as if panicked took both of its hands and held its head in pain.

The DDOS attack had broken the link between the enemy and whoever was controlling it. Now it was confused and stalled, and now I had a real chance.

"Alright, Erin, whatever you did worked!" Olivia shouted, "Now finish it off!"

I brought up the Pallet Gun and let the EVA have it, squeezing the trigger until the whole clip was empty. The multiple bursts damaged the Harpy with blood-red wounds all over it, but it was still standing and now it was furiously angry. Instead of falling down wounded it instead howled with a low, gurgling sound and then came after me at full speed.

This hadn't quite worked the way I though it would, as cutting off the control signal had instead caused the Harpy to fall back onto its own Dummy Plug for control. Now it was again the vicious, mindlessly ravenous beast that they were known to be, and it ran towards me with it's lance in its hand. I still struggled to figure out what to do next as we bounded towards the next set of hotel towers, this one looking like a circus tent with red and white candy stripes painted all over it.

With the Pallet Gun out of ammo I was running out of options, while the Harpy continued to charge me with it's lance. The weapon had transformed back from a two-edged sword into a skinny pair of twisted red needles and I knew that it intended to plunge those into us. I also knew that our AT Field would be no good in preventing that either.

"Erin," a voice cried out, "Erin! Get the lance."

"The Lance?" I asked.

"Your own Lance, you dummy!" the voice said. The voice was coming into my head but this time I knew who it was.

"Patrick!" The link between the two of us was formed again, as Patrick was now seeing what I was seeing.

"Get it now!"

The Harpy roared as he came close, cocking back its arm in an effort to launch the lance at me. With undue speed I dropped the empty Pallet Gun and grabbed my own lance that was still strapped to my EVA's back. Then with all of my mental strength I launched it towards the Harpy, screaming as I let it fly. Before the Harpy could get his own weapon off my lance sailed through the air and plunged right through his AT Field, making hexagon-shaped waves of energy as it did so. My lance struck the Harpy right in the chest, protruding out like a spike that dangled half-way in.

"I got him!" I shouted.

"Not yet, you don't," Patrick's voice came back into my mind. "Push all the way in! Do it now!"

I heard the Harpy roar in pain but he still wasn't down yet and despite being wounded all over rushed at me at full speed. Within another second he'd be on top of me, and there was only one thing that I could do. Pushing back all of my fear I ran straight towards him, and with my EVA's hands grabbed onto the lance and shoved it further into his chest as we collided.

I heard a crunching sound, and then the entire video display was covered in bright, blood red. I felt the EVA fall backwards towards the ground, and struggled to move. Something was heavy on top of me, something that kept me from going anywhere. Concentrating hard, I continued to try and move and finally managed to budge my way to one side. There were more awful sounds of crunching and pops and snaps and then I managed to finally free myself from the Harpy and stood up on the battlefield.

Just besides me was the body of the Mass Production Unit, with part of the lance protruding out of its back from where I had shoved it in. It was covered in sticky red LCL, with when combined with the milky white of the EVA's own carcass made for a disgusting sight and smell. Oddly all I could think about was a strawberry ice cream sundae, except that it didn't smell like ice cream. It smelled like death.

Catching my breath I heard Olivia's voice over the speaker. "Erin, are you alright?"

"I got him" I said, with more relief than elation.

"Good work," replied Olivia. "That was something else, kiddo."

I fell back on the throne and just looked out the display. In the distance I could see the profiles of the old derelict hotels, now some of which were more ruins of collapsed steel and concrete after the battle. Funny, I thought after winning a battle on my own I'd feel great about it, as finally I had a real and solid accomplishment as an EVA pilot, but that feeling didn't come. It felt more like an emptiness inside of me, of being more tired than I could imagine. Something seemed still elusive, there was something that still needed to be done.

Looking at the display I saw the skyline of overcast clouds and the mountain ridgeline in the distance. Facing north I could see the peaks in the distance, just a few miles away. And I knew that just a few more miles beyond that was…home.

In that moment I made a fateful decision, one that I really hoped I wouldn't regret. I pulled on the actuators and brought the EVA into motion, pointed us north, and then started running.

"Erin? Erin! Where are you going?" Olivia's voice came over the audio.

"I just have to see something," I told her, "I'll be back."

Olivia wasn't stupid. "Erin, don't go," she warned me. "It's not like you knew it before. There's nothing there anymore."

"I still have to see it," I replied. I ran my EVA north and I was already past the dusty remains of the old Vegas downtown below me.

"Erin? Erin! Don't, that's an order," Olivia continued to try and coax me away but I just kept running. I was careful to also run the shut out program to keep Oliva and the others at NERV from shutting down the EVA.

It took me just a few minutes to reach the mountains and I climbed over then with little difficulty. Behind me was Las Vegas the city, which still looked grand and spacious despite it being a ruin, but ahead of me was something else.

You could see it from what was called the Spring Mountains, looking towards the north there was a massive, even ridgeline a thousand feet tall that looked like a wall of sand. It was the crater ridgeline, the result of what had happened at Second Branch, when Dad tried to force the EVA to activate with a captive Patrick inside and the EVA reacted forcefully on her own to protect him.

"Erin," a voice came inside my head. It was again Patrick, the link between us was still bonded.

"Are you going to try to stop me too?" I asked him aloud.

"No," he said. "No, I won't do that. I think you need to see it…to see what happened."

I didn't reply to him but instead made for the crater's edge. I pushed the EVA to climb over the rim and then stand on top, and then I saw the rest of the landscape. The mountain valley that had been my home, Tonopah, Area 51, Groom Lake, NERV-2, or Second Branch, whatever it was called, had disappeared. In its place were miles of desert floor that was perfectly smooth. No mountains or hills, no features even, just flat ground, for miles ahead of me. It was a shocking thing to see, as it was nothing like I remembered at all.

Undaunted, I pushed the EVA to go over the crater's edge and then onto the gentle slopes of the rim, still pushing forward and gaining speed as we got to more even ground. The desert floor went on for miles and in those miles was absolutely nothing. It looked worse than a lunar landscape.

My EVA's display gave me my location and still kept the map coordinates of Second Branch in memory, so I continued towards what would have been the center of the base. It took a few more minutes of running to reach it and I got more nervous as I approached what had once been a city of fifty thousand. Where had they all gone? Was Patrick right in that the base was somehow teleported? Or were they just vaporized into nothingness? There was no life here anymore from what I could see and that made me feel all the worse.

After several more minutes of running we reached Ground Zero, where Unit 04 had once disappeared and then reappeared three months later, and I slowed the EVA to a walk. From the display I could see signs that someone had been here, there were some small sensor units laid out on the desert floor, and the remains of what looked like an aircraft runway set up in the flat desert floor. But there wasn't anything else or anyone else. It was home, but home wasn't here anymore.

Finally I stopped the EVA, and once I did so I kept looking around, turning us a full circle to spot any sign of anything that looked like life, or even just a leftover piece of a building or something to indicate there had once been a city here. But there was nothing that I could see. Nothing at all, and the darkness of the whole thing finally hit me. It really was over, I realized. My home was gone, and my childhood was gone with it.

I told myself I wouldn't cry and tried to stick to it. I would just be brave and stomach this just like I did everything else I had endured, from being kidnapped and lied to, to nearly being raped, to having to go into battle and kill enemies both large and small. But in the back of my mind I kept hoping that maybe all of this was just some nightmare that kept happening, and that by coming home I could at least end it and wake up returning into my own world. But it didn't happen.

I saw something from the display, a small flash of color down on the desert floor. Using the display's magnification I focused on it and determined to at least investigate. Maybe I just wanted to get out of the EVA, but I set her down to a kneeling position and then ejected the entry plug half-way, to allow me to go out the hatch.

The step ladder telescoped downwards and I rode it on the way down, setting foot on the flat surface of the desert below the EVA. Upon walking on the ground I confirmed that it really was just flat, even ground. Strange.

Where I had seen the colors appear from was just a few yards away and I walked over. I didn't want to believe it at first, which is why I got out of the EVA to see this up close, but there was after all of this devastation one actual sign of life: a small cluster of wildflowers had sprouted from a crack in the ground.

Wildflowers. My mother would grow then when I was little, and she always maintained a little garden by our old house. They had washed away in the rainstorm when she went away, but after so long here they were again. They were only a very few flowers, and they were tiny, just inches in length, but they were alive and blooming in bright purple, white, and yellow colors.

I got down on my knees and just watched the flowers, knowing that this wasn't just an accident. Mom had brought me here to this spot. She had done this for a reason, so that I could see this.

In the distance there was another giant aircraft, one that carried a giant figure underneath it. The aircraft flew low and then dropped it's cargo, and another Evangelion dropped to the ground near us, landing with a thud that felt like a small earthquake. The EVA was purple and green in color and I knew from that it was one of the units from Japan, the one called Unit 01. Even so I didn't think much of it and turned my attention back to the wildflowers.

The emotions inside of me couldn't be kept in any longer and tears came from my eyes. I wanted it back, I screamed inside my head, I wanted my old life back, with mom and dad and such a peaceful life of our own in the small house in the desert. The life I had before EVA, before anything else had come and destroyed it.

I knew I shouldn't think such things, that somehow after all of these bad things that good things also came to me. I had met my twin and remembered all of the joy and fun that came from our reunion and our new life together. I had made something of myself even despite the pain I felt inside, whether it was inside the EVA or outside of it, and that I wasn't just a little girl anymore. But I missed my mom. I missed all of those years we could have spent together, and I hadn't really come to terms with it all until now.

Bending over the little flowers, my own tears gave them water. I figured it was the least I could do, having these things survive in such a hostile landscape. I could give them life, I could prolong it. I didn't want to leave them alone, the way I had been left alone.

I heard footsteps coming close to me but I still didn't get up. I just stayed there, knelt over the little garden in the desert, until someone came right up and knelt besides me.

Looking up, I saw her. Rei had been the one to pilot Unit 01, and she had come outside to find me here. Dressed in her white-colored plugsuit, her blue hair blowing with the gentle wind, she looked at me with her bright red eyes and waited.

"I…" I stammered to say, "I…just wanted to come back here." Rei didn't say or do anything in reply, but just watched me and let me talk. "I…I…" I looked up at her and then said with sobs in my voice. "I guess life goes on, doesn't it?"

Rei just nodded her head, and then told me in a gentle, whispering voice. "And so do you."

At that moment I just threw my arms around her and hugged her tight, burying my head on her shoulder and sobbing uncontrollably, for how long I didn't know.

* * *

Finally I got some composure back and the two of us got back inside our respective Evangelion units and walked back to Las Vegas. We didn't say anything on the return trip to each other, but I felt like there was now a bond of understanding between us. At my darkest moment inside she had been there for me, and even if she has said little the meaning of her heart was clear. Out of that I've always appreciated what she did then.

Upon reaching Las Vegas I parked Unit 04 back at the airport where I had first landed, and where there were now a half-dozen of other aircraft on the ground. The area had been quickly transformed into a camp with tents and small steel pre-fab buildings, and there were soldiers and technicians all around. I again put the EVA into a kneeling position and soft-ejected the entry plug so that I could get out. On reaching the tarmac I saw that Olivia was close by in a 4x4 vehicle, and that another by now very familiar figure was standing next to her, wearing a green nylon jacket over his khaki suit.

"Patrick" I shouted as I waived to him. My brother waived back to me and I jogged over to where he was standing, throwing myself against him as soon as I could. He put his arms around me and held me tight. Looking down towards me, he caressed my hair and I looked up and smiled at him.

"So, how did it go?" he asked me.

I nodded, still with my face flush red from crying earlier. "It went alright," I told him, with sniffles still in my voice. "I just had to see it, you know."

"Then it will be alright," he told me, and I hugged him again as he kissed my forehead. After a moment I broke off and stated the obvious. "So, where's the broken leg?"

"Um," he said in a somewhat embarrassed tone, "it was just a sprain. False alarm."

"Yeah, right," Olivia commented from where she was seated in the 4x4. Pointing at Patrick, she said to him "you are a sneaky bastard."

"How do you think I survived this long?" Patrick said in a smart-ass tone.

"Well," I said to him with a chuckle, "thanks for that 'break.' I'm glad I was able to do all of this."

"So did you see Shinji out there?" Patrick asked me. I paused for a second and then realized that he didn't know who piloted Unit 01. "It wasn't him," I told him. Patrick thought for just a moment and then it dawned on him who had come instead. His eyebrows rapidly shot upwards as he looked around to where the purple-colored Unit 01 was standing close by. Blurting out "excuse me!" Patrick made a wild dash for the EVA as Olivia and I watched.

I turned back to Olivia and apologized. "I'm sorry for taking the EVA like that," I told her.

"Don't worry," she said to me with a smirk. "I'm just glad we got this all done. If anyone asks, we're just gonna say this was a precautionary action to make sure the enemy didn't have some sort of surprise at the NERV-2 site, and that's all. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Oh, and I'm really sorry you had to miss your winter dance over this."

I giggled a little, now feeling a lot better. "It's fine. I'll always remember this one for sure."

Glancing back towards where Patrick had run, I saw Rei just drop off the rope ladder to be caught in Patrick's arms as she came down. Overjoyed to see her again after so many months apart, Patrick swung her in the air in excitement. While they were too far away to hear what they said to each other I could make a pretty good guess, as I saw a smile reached her face and watched as the two of them shared several kisses in the distance.

* * *

 _Here is the latest installment, and our next-to-last chapter as Erin finally confronts her past. Originally this story was going to end around chapter 16 or so but decided we needed one more major battle and action before wrapping it up, and that prompted me to extend to 21 chapters. The next chapter is definitely the last one, and while this story was finished behind schedule I feel like it's all the better for it._

 _If you've actually been to Las Vegas you probably could guess the layout of the battle area where Erin and Unit 04 fought the Harpy, but just in case you were wondering this is the sequence of how it came down:_

 _a) Unit 04 landed at McKernan Airport; b) walked to Mandalay Bay; c) then Luxor, and then to the corner of Tropicana Blvd and Las Vegas Blvd where there's four hotels: Excalibur (the castle), New York New York, MGM Grand (the green one with the lion) and Tropicana. d) When attacked by the Harpy, Unit 04 dove over the remains of NYNY, then walked parallel to Interstate 15 North, along a road called Frank Sinatra Drive that goes behind the hotels on The Strip. e) Unit 04 then hid behind Bellagio, and then hopped over Caesar's Palace and back across LV Blvd to the Flamingo. The spare Pallet gun was landed on the Flamingo's parking structure. f) Unit 04 then evades up the East edge of LV Blvd, going past Imperial Palace to where the Desert Inn is (notable for it's golf course behind the hotel). The Harpy attacked her at Desert Inn, and Unit 04 escaped further North up the strip, eventually ending up at Circus Circus where it stopped and killed the Harpy._

 _You may wonder what hotel is the Desert Inn but remember this is the Evangelion TV Series timeline so we take Las Vegas as abandoned around 2001, after Second Impact. In this timeline The Desert Inn property was never sold to Steve Wynn, who later demolished it and built the Wynn and Encore hotels in its place._

 _Please join us for the final chapter, hopefully in February 2018, and we will wrap this all up and provided a last word on how the story was put together._


	21. Freedom

Following winter's little escapade things finally got back to normal for the two of us. What happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas as while I didn't get in any real trouble for switching places with Patrick as the pilot of Unit 04, afterwards I wasn't asked to pilot the EVA again. It was fine with me, I felt like I could finally let it go and focus on what was ahead. And what was ahead was competition.

After nearly seven months of training and preparation Patrick and I found ourselves on the spring floor at Portsmouth Community College's gymnasium, for the all-regional Acrobatic Gymnastics Challenge Cup. It was our first actual competition and while I worked my best to keep my excitement in check I just could not wipe that nervous smile off my face. This is where I had wanted to be for so long, since I was tiny I had imagined something like this and while my actual experience didn't exactly match up to the dreams of a little blonde six-year-old it still completely worked for me.

For the last two days we had competed as a team in the Mixed Pairs group against about a dozen other boy/girl teams from all over New England. From the pace of the competition it was evident that everyone had worked hard to get here, and we went through two rounds of competition with our well-practiced routines, nervous but also anxious to prove ourselves against the others. On the first day we performed in both Balance and Dynamic rounds and to our honest surprise did well in both events, placing within the top three in either of them. Now on the second day, as part of a reduced group of six finalists teams, we were to perform one final routine that would decide the winner of the competition. We weren't on top, but we were within striking distance.

The random selection placed us sixth out of six teams, which depending on how you looked at it could be good or bad. The good was that we could watch the first five pairs complete ahead of us, and know what we were up against in terms of how many points we needed to place or even win. The bad is that we had to wait until the very end to complete, managing to keep warm and limber on the sidelines while hoping the scorers would give us a far shake at the end of a long day.

After nearly an hour of watching other teams go at it with their best, Patrick and I both saw the leaderboard and knew what we had to do. Two groups, both from Cambridge and both made up of experienced teams, had taken #1 and #2 on the leaderboard, but their performances were far from perfect. The "Base" or boy on one of the teams had even dropped the "Flyer" or the girl member on one of the balance stunts, and we knew that the markdown on that mistake would give us the chance we needed. We had to be perfect, but that first place was there and waiting for us.

With a nod to each other, both Patrick and I took off our matching warm-up suits and started making our way on the sidelines after applying a good amount of chalk to our bare feet. Coach Keiko gave us a final word of advice before we went onto the floor.

"Patrick, watch that flying catch," she enjoined. "Nail that and you got this!"

"Will do," he replied.

"And both of you! Don't forget to smile!" Keiko added, then clapped and shouted " _Gambatte, ne_!" _Good Luck._

Marching onto the floor, I took a quick look at the stands to see our cheering section. Maria was there, holding a big banner in her hands as she shouted encouragement. So were a big group of Chamberlin students including not only Arjuna, Jason, and Linda but about twenty others who had decided to follow us on the weekend and give us loud and enthusiastic support from the indoor bleachers. I gave them a quick wave of the hand then kept walking to where our starting point was on the floor.

Working together for several months the two of us had mentally as well as physically made this final routine as polished as we could. Privately we decided that instead of trying to come up with something more artistically classical that gymnasts often used that instead we'd make EVA the "unspoken" theme of our Mixed Routine. The Mixed was to be a two-minute combination of balances and stunts that were both together as partners and in carefully-coordinated parallel with each other, and to us was our best chance at a high score.

As I said, the Mixed "EVA" theme had a few hints in it that to most outsiders probably looked like something vaguely original. For this event we had our outfits custom-made, my leotard was a long-sleeved competition-type that fit tightly but snugly, with a high collar. The color pattern however was in orange with black piping and striping wrapped all around me, and the number "04" was printed just below my neckline. Sounds familiar, huh? Patrick wore a fitted short-sleeved top with the same color pattern, along with patterned gym pants, and he too had a "04" under his collar. When Keiko asked us what the "04" was for, we just told her it was our lucky number, and she replied that it better not be our final ranking in the scores.

The other part of the routine was the music. Earlier as we were first creating our routine and after trying out what must have been a hundred different music pieces for accompaniment Patrick came up with this one short music track that featured two pianos playing in matching concert with each other. When I asked him where he got it from, he told me that it was actually used as a training tool by Shinji and Asuka when then fought Angels and needed to be in tight coordination with each other. Well, that was all of the inspiration that I needed, and while the original music piece was just about a minute long we looped it and stretched it to two minutes to fit our own routine. Of course, no one else knew but us that the music was inspired by EVA, but then that was part of the fun.

At the center of the spring floor Patrick and I made our starting poses, each one of us whispering a silent prayer to win this, or at least don't screw it up. We held in place silently motionless as our names were called by the announcer and the crowd quieted down. For a few seconds I swallowed nervously: this is what I always wanted and now I was actually here. Could I really do this? A electronic beep sounded that was our three-second warning that the music would start, and at the first note of the soundtrack we began.

Our starting point was the two of us standing apart, each one of us dancing and spinning in our own direction. Suddenly we caught a glimpse of each other, and then our movements coordinated. We then each led into a pair of somersaults that placed us right next to each other. Once together, Patrick carefully but gracefully lifted me up on his shoulders and I performed a split stunt, balancing myself on one foot on his right shoulder while arabesqueing first at 90 degrees and then at 180 for a good five seconds. From that I dramatically flipped off his mount, rotating a full 360 in the air and landing on my feet as Patrick gently caught me by the waist.

From our first pair of stunts we again flipped in coordination, this time apart from each other. Both of us went into a high-speed somersaulting run than again put us in parallel with each other, and this time we went into something of a dancer's embrace, his arms around me as I tried to resist him. It was part of the show, and also as part of it he knelt down and I again got onto his shoulders. This time I again balanced, but with my hands, holding myself up for another good five seconds while Patrick changing his post from first a kneeling to then a standing, and then finally a split of his own, from which I came rolling off.

We had practiced this routine so many times it honestly felt like a relief that we'd not have to do it again after this. I could hear the crowd clapping with the music and cheers but I couldn't let myself get distracted, We had a big finish and that needed to be perfect. I looked at my partner and very quickly he gave me a nod, and then we went into another set of speedy flips, this time perfectly in parallel. We again got into a dance embrace from which he swung me around, his hand on my waist as he spun me around himself while I posed gracefully while moving through the air at high speed. I then put my foot into his palm and he then threw me as far up in the air as he could and I went flying airborne.

One of the reasons why Coach Keiko was so excited to become our trainer was because to her we met the perfect demographic of the Acro Gymnast. As a pair, I was petite and light, and a very experienced gymnast already, while Patrick was tall and muscular and didn't shy from getting into action. But on top of that we were twins, and even though we hadn't know each other all of our lives we had bonded and made up for that lost time in the months we spent together in Maine. By now we really were two halves of a unit, and we proved that by knowing and trusting the other, and probably nothing was more important than that when you're throwing a ninety-five pound teenaged girl high up in the air like some sort of frisbee.

I flipped trough the air and landed again on Patrick's shoulders, the gasps from the crowd were audible to me as I swiftly but gracefully placed my hands on his shoulders and then did a handstand, then went into splits on the handstand, holding each position for at least three seconds. It was very strenuous and I nearly gave out, but holding as long as I could I then rolled out and then into a basket catch as my brother grabbed me with both arms. He then swung me around one more time and dove for the floor, and we ended with a final pose, me gracefully on top of him, and both of us finishing with our arms wide open.

Our routine was one that told a story, about a pair of people who discover each other, initially get scared but then unite and work together. It's hard to convey that simply with moves but we gave this our best and I hoped the judges and the crowd would see that story, beyond simply the balance stunts and coordinated flips that we did.

Elated to be done, we walked off the spring floor, waiving to the crowd as we moved to the sidelines. Keiko was waiting for us with towels and water. "How did we do," Patrick asked in complete honesty.

She didn't say anything except to give us a "thumbs up" sign and from that I guess we did alright.

Panting and trying to wipe the sweat that I was covered in, I hugged my brother as he came in close. "Think we got it?" he asked me.

"I don't even care," I told him. "I'm just glad that's done with."

But then the announcer sounded with our names and we watched the scoreboard. For an anxious minute I waited, watching for our scores to be posted on the LED display high above us. First our names flashed up there, then our combined score was posted: 9.55. It took me half a second to do the math.

"OH MY GOD WE DID IT!" I screamed out loud. Screaming with me, Patrick immediately lifted me in the air and swung me around in excitement. Keiko came into our group and hugged us both. "Unbelievable!" she told us. "You guys won your fist match!"

We went another five minutes going crazy on the sidelines, jumping and waiving to our support section in the crowd. Finally we got calmed down enough to make it to the medals platform, where the chief judge gave us both a gold medal and gave me flowers for winning our event. On that medal stand I took a deep breath and prayed another prayer of thanks. I never really thought I deserved this, but through teamwork, effort, and fate had ended up here anyway. It was a moment that I'll never forget.

The cloud we rested on did have one small dark spot: today was also our last day in America. Tomorrow we would be leaving for Japan.

* * *

The following morning a nurse came to our house in Maine with another gun-like device, and promptly removed the GPS tracker that I was embedded with when I first came here one year ago. I was also presented with a legal document saying that my sentence was complete, although I'd still have to comply with parole restrictions until I was eighteen, upon which my record would be expunged. But basically I was now, finally, completely free.

I spent the morning packing things, trying to work out how much I really needed to take with me. Finally I got three suitcases completely filled up. I had that much stuff, I wondered, all gathered up in one year. But I was all packed now and so was Patrick. We wore clothes for traveling, me a cream-colored sweater with a long plaid skirt and brown lace-up boots worn with sheer hose, while Patrick wore a khaki sportscoat and slacks over a dark green oxford shirt and brown loafers. NERV was graciously sending us their G6 to fly us to Japan, so at least we'd have a comfortable flight with a bedroom and shower in the plane for the 12-hour trip to Japan. As we pulled our things down the staircase I couldn't help but notice Patrick's attitude as we prepared to leave. He was downright perky.

"Can't wipe that smile off your face, huh?" I asked him.

He smirked at me. "Got someone warm and sweet waiting for me when I get there."

"Well, don't hog her all to yourself. She's my only other friend in Japan right now."

"You'll make a lot of others," he reassured me. "Don't worry."

But I was sort of worried. Japan had been a low point for me, from the horrible things that had happened thirteen months ago. I knew a lot had changed since then, but I still felt I needed to account for it. And I couldn't do that just by staying here in safety in the USA. I had to face the present, and I had to be there for Patrick as his own dreams, put aside for a year on my account, could now set sail too.

We pulled our suitcases outside of the lake house to find a committee waiting to say goodbye to us as we left. Standing in front of our front door were Linda, Arjuna, and Jason, dressed to welcome us in matching blue and red school sweaters. All of them had long looks on their faces, as they were very sorry to see us go. We embraced each of them in turn.

"I can't believe you're leaving already," Arjuna said to me as we held each other. "You only just got here!'

"Yeah," added Linda, who hugged me after Arjuna did. "Can't you guys at least finish out the school year?"

I shrugged. "The Japanese school year starts in April, so it's better if we start the new year at the beginning."

"Well, we're gonna miss both of you guys," replied Linda, who then stepped up to Patrick. "Bet _you're_ glad to be getting back to Japan."

Patrick's smile was still there and all Linda could say in exchange was "so at least have a great time over there and don't be a stranger, that goes for both of you!" LInda offered a hug to Patrick and he gladly accepted.

Jason stood by and I made sure I didn't leave him out. He was a bit shy as always but that didn't stop me from hugging him tightly, and even giving him an affectionate peck on the cheek. "Thanks for being there for me, buddy."

He rubbed his cheek a little in embarrassment. "Yeah, I'm glad I met you. Now that your sentence is over, do they let you go back on the Internet?"

"Legally, yes," I confirmed. "Not that I haven't been doing that already, but don't tell anyone that."

Jason chuckled a little, as my internet surfing was against my sentence instructions, but I had been good enough not to have ever been caught doing it. "Okay, then keep in touch. I want to hear all about Japan."

"We'll be sure to send you all of the schoolgirl panty shots we can find," Patrick quipped. I quickly elbowed him, keeping a smile on as I did so. "Don't mind him. We'll be out there for you guys." Jason just blushed as did Patrick, but for entirely different reasons.

Maria opened up the front door and came out dressed in a navy blue suit, dressed up as she was expecting someone to come by. Maria had already made it clear that this was home for the both of us, and if we went to Japan please to just consider it an extended visit. We would always have a room here at the house by the lake, no matter what.

A large black SUV came driving up to the house and we all watched as it parked right next to us. "Is that our ride to the airfield?" asked Patrick.

"Yes but there's someone else coming," Maria said.

Out of the passenger door came the Admiral, Vance's father had finally returned to the lake house. He wasn't dressed in a military uniform but in a red flannel shirt and blue jeans, and work boots. Maria stood expectantly in front of the house as Mr. Vinson first came to see her.

"So," he said in a nonchalant voice. "I heard there's some new vacancies at the house now."

"There's always room for you," she replied with a slight smile. "How long were you planning on staying for?"

"How about…" the Admiral then grabbed Marina in a tight bear hug. "forever!" There was a look of surprise on her face, surprise and happiness that I hadn't seen Maria in a long while.

"You really mean that?" she asked him, his arms still around her.

"As of now officially retired. My work is done." He then looked at the two of us. "With some thanks to the two of you as well,."

"What did _we_ do?" asked Patrick

He let Maria go and then came and stood in front of us. "You did what you had to. Not what you wanted to, not even what you needed to, but you did what heroes do and saved us all. That's more then all of us could have asked of the both of you."

Vinson approached me, standing just in front. He still seemed like a giant next to my tiny self up against him. "Thanks to you as well," he said to me.

"I'm sorry, though," I told him, "I didn't exactly do things right by you."

"All's well that ends well, young lady, and I know Vance would have been proud of you." He said, offering a hand. I took it and shook it, surprise that his grip wasn't nearly as firm as the first time I met him. I wasn't up to an embrace quite yet, but it felt good to shake his hand again.

"That van is here to take you both to your plane, and then you'll fly back to Japan." Vinson told us. "Everything's been arranged with the Kajis, so nothing to worry about when you get there. Unit 04 will also be sent back, sometime today. "

"Thanks, sir," said Patrick for the both of us, shaking the former Admiral's hand himself firmly. Maria then came to us.

"Thank you so much," she told Patrick and she embraced him tightly. " _Via con dios_." Patrick just nodded, holding her tight for a few seconds, and then she moved onto me. The two of us got emotional as we held onto each other by the arm.

"Oh God," I said to her, flustered, "I don't even know where to begin?"

"No need at all, my darling," Maria said to me and tightly embraced me. "It's always been my pleasure, _mi jita_. It will be lonely without you here."

"I'll be back, _mi madre_ " I told her, "and soon."

Maria held my head in her hands and smiled. "I know you will." She then kissed me as a mother would a daughter. From that I took Patrick's hand as he motioned towards the black SUV. "Our ride's waiting," he told me.

"Not yet," I said to him. "I got one more goodbye to make."

"Okay," he said, and let me go.

From the lake house I walked the pathway along the lake. It was late March, and flowers were just starting to come back into bloom along the shoreline. Following the path by the lakeside, I arrived at the quiet patch of clearing that I knew so well. It had been nearly two years since I was at this spot before, and I stood there and closed my eyes, waiting for the breeze to come.

I could feel the warmth of sunlight on my face and I opened up my eyes. Standing in front of me, wearing a simple white shirt and jeans, was Vance.

I smiled at him and he stepped up to me until he was in arms reach. "Hey, Tiger," he said to me in a soft voice.

"Hi, Vee," I said to him.

"So you made it?" he said.

I brushed the hair out of my eyes. "Yup, I made it back here."

"Well, you did good," he told me. There was a moment of silence as we looked into each other's eyes. I could see Vance's image sort of shimmer in the rays of the sunlight. The memory of him was fading for me, but that didn't stop it from still holding my heart.

"Will you be okay?" I asked him.

"It's alright," he told me with a sense of resignation. "In the end everything fits where it belongs, let's just say that. But you've got a long way to go before you finish your puzzle."

"Still wish you were here," I whispered to him, my voice starting to crack as I said it.

Vance stepped up to me just in front of my face. "All of the best parts of me, everything that was ever good about me, is now with you. Anytime you need me, anytime at all, just think of those things and I'll be there," he said. "But Erin, please move forward. Don't look back."

"I won't" I said as I tried to fight the tears. "But I'll never find someone like you."

"You won't need to," He said to me with a smile. "You'll find your way."

The image of Vance started to fade more and reflexively I reached out to him. His hand came up to where mine was and just for a tiny fraction of a second I felt something. But as he started to disappear completely, I said to him "Vance! I still love you!"

He didn't reply, but as he vanished from view his smile became wider and his dark eyes looked into mine, in the way that they did when I knew he wanted to show me that I was loved by him. Vance couldn't say it in the end, but that was just like him. And then he was finally gone.

I took a deep breath and cleared my eyes. It was the end for us, but not the end for me and he was right: It was time to move on. I turned away from the clearing, looking forward and ahead to the life In front of me. I waived to my brother and told him I was on my way, and he smiled.

THE END.

THE BLUE ROSE WILL CONTINUE

* * *

 _Writer's Notes_

 _Why did I write this story? The Other Side of Me is something pretty unusual in fanfiction, as it's a side story of another story with a strong Original Character element. It's written in a way that could either stand on it's own or as a piece of the larger whole, and it's also written in parallel with my other works, as The Other Side of Me takes place completely in tandem with The Blue Rose parts 1, 2 and 3._

 _It was however, mostly a passion project and not one I wrote to get reviews or follows. I know this is a lonely task at times, as The Blue Rose just doesn't fit into the expectations of the casual fanfic fan, and is tangentially too far away from the core EVA story for many Evangelion fans._

 _When I was writing the other Blue Rose stories, I spent a fair amount of time crafting the relationship between Patrick and his twin Erin, but in doing that I knew that to maintain the suspense and pacing I wanted she couldn't enter the story too early. Erin is hinted at throughout the series, but doesn't actually show up until the second half of The Awakening. She becomes very important to the story as it reaches the climax, but on completing the writing I had always felt that there was a lot more room for her than what I gave her. At some point I thought it might be interesting, as Patrick and Erin were separated at birth, to work out a parallel storyline for her and that's where the basic idea for The Other Side of Me came from._

 _Given that this story wasn't a effort to gain popularity I felt like I had more freedom to be creative with the format, so I decided on a couple of important guidelines._

 _1\. First Parson Limited Viewpoint: everything in The Other Side is directly from Erin's POV. That was a challenge as I had never written a First Person POV before, and I wanted to maintain a very strict limitation in the writing: everything in the narrative is exactly based on Erin's own observations. _

_2\. No Outline. That's not to say no structure: there's a definite structure to The Other Side because at times it has to line up to the rest of the Blue Rose, in some places it's the exact same scenes as portrayed in another story. But there wasn't a firm, structured outline when I started writing, which was unusual for me. This story was meant to feel more like an oral history or re-telling than a fast-paced novel, so at times it comes off as Slice-of-Life and that was a feeling that I wanted in the reading. Some writers called this the "Gardening" approach and it's an interesting experience. _

_Once the ground rules were figured out I wrote the first three-four chapters before publishing anything, in order to see if the format worked and made sense and if there was reader interest. There was strong positive feedback from the Beta readers (thanks James and Patrick for your earlier work on this) and that was the go ahead to move to a full-length story. Originally this was set to fifteen chapters, then extended to twenty-one when I worked out a conclusion that was more action-oriented and more emotionally powerful._

 _In the writing I realized that Erin, as she was presented in the earlier Blue Rose narrative, had quite a story already: separated from her brother at birth and raised to be a pilot in secret, she suffers an accident in the EVA, ends up in a coma, then gets nabbed by SEELE who then lies to her about event and persuades her to work for them. Once she realizes the truth this falls on her like a wall of bricks, and then we get a change in her viewpoint that's dramatic and I think appealing to the reader. So it makes Erin an interesting character and one that in my viewpoint deserved expanding on. I hope this story does the job._

 _So where do we go from here? With the Forrestal twins returning to Japan, which is portrayed in the last chapter of The Awakening entitled "Hanami," we now have a complete composite cast. With that in place work is progressing on the next Blue Rose story, entitled "Never Jet Alone," that will have more of a lighter tone although still dangerous for our pilots at times. Hopefully you'll see that story starting up this spring._

 _Please keep up the feedback, as anything I get from readers is always appreciated and useful. Thanks very much for reading this story and I truly hoped you enjoyed it._


End file.
